It’s the weekend before Thanksgiving, and you know what that means — a visit to Santa!

(I know. I think it’s stupid too.)

This weekend was the opening of Christmas at the Park at the Yukon Community Center. The Christmas lights were on, the band was playing, the horse-drawn carriage was toting around people, and of course Santa was on hand to take pictures and ask the kids what they wanted for Christmas … except he forgot to ask Mason while he was sitting up there. Fortunately Mason’s already mailed off the first of presumably many letters to the jolly one, so we reassured him that even though Santa didn’t ask while Mason was there, he knows.

Due to the fear of swine flu, each kid now gets a squirt of hand sanitizer before touching Santa. As the lady gave Mason a nice-sized squirt of sanitizer, Mason informed her that she must be the “Santatizer”. Everybody got a kick out of that.

After hanging around for a few minutes to get faces painted and to see if we won a bicycle (we didn’t) it was off to view the Christmas lights. I’m not even going to go into any detail because (A) this is only the first of I’m guessing a dozen visits to the lights, and (B) it’s a bunch of Christmas lights; use your imagination.

There are at least three different sections to drive through. The one part we chose had two different light shows syncopated to music that you tune your car’s radio to. I must be getting old. All I can think of to say is, there were a lot of lights. The kids enjoyed it, I guess that’s what matters. Sorry, it’s too early in November for me to have much Christmas spirit yet.