The Proctors: Flying Santa!

So we pretty much deemed this "Santa Weekend!" After seeing Santa last night at the mall, this morning we bundled up and headed down to the Pink Palace Museum to see Santa's annual arrival by helicopter! We were all pretty excited to see how it all worked, and we'd never been so close to a helicopter before. We arrived in plenty of time, and found a large circle marked off in the huge front lawn. We didn't really think anything about strategy, we just picked a spot that was not crowded. (Found out later this was a mistake.) It was really chilly, so we were all bundled up trying to stay warm for the 20 minutes or so until landing. The helicopter actually landed twice, I guess the first one was a practice. That first time was crazy! It was so loud, and we'd never felt such a wind! It blew the stroller right over! The second time it landed we were a bit more prepared. I had secured the stroller, but it blew David's hat across the yard. It was then we realized our tactical error in our location around the circle! It landed so that the door faced away from us and towards the largest mob of people that we'd avoided when we picked our spot!! Bummer! As soon as Santa stepped out, we saw his legs, and then everyone rushed him. And that was about as close as we got! It was still a pretty fun and interesting experience!

We had planned to even extend the Christmas activities further by attending opening weekend of the Memphis Zoo Lights, but that got sidetracked due to a Christmas light hanging disaster later in the day!

Once we got home it had warmed up, so David started working on hanging the Christmas lights on the outside of the house. He was going along great until he got to the portion over the garage. He put his ladder up to clean out the gutters a little before putting the lights up, and that's when disaster struck. It was a move that would make "Clark Griswold" proud, but let me assure you that it was not funny at all in real life! His ladder turned out to be at a bad angle, and while he was up at the top of it, the bottom legs just slid right down our driveway. Poor David pretty much just rode the ladder crashing flat down to the ground. He mostly landed on the side of his leg, and one forearm must have landed on the ladder, because he's got a huge gash on that arm. Praise The Lord he's okay and didn't hit his head or anything. Scared the daylights out of all of us!! I think he was a little in shock at first. His face turned ghostly white, and he looked like he might pass out, so I made him lay down right on the floor.

As of Thanksgiving, his leg and chest are still sore, and we're still bandaging his arm, but he's well on the road to recovery!