Mom Goes To See Santa With Her Friends. Then She Notices What He's Wearing

December 17, 2016

Yesterday in between our Mickey deliveries, we somehow randomly ended up by a toy store in Rochester, Minnesota.

I told my elf buddies that I remember Colten's Nurses at Mayo telling us last year that we needed to take Colten to Santa at ABC Toy Zone... something we never ended up doing. We decided to go see if Santa was there.

We walked into the toy store, slowly heading toward the back of the store where Santa would be. As we got closer, we saw him and all looked at each other and smiled.

We got even closer to Santa and my eyes shifted to the left of Santa's chair and I noticed the Christmas tree next to his chair had a Mickey and a Minnie on it.

"No way" we all thought.

Getting even closer we noticed the trees in the back had Kaylee's son Easton's favorite, a ninja turtle, and by that was Olaf from Frozen... Jade's daughter Ailee loves Frozen. We knew at that moment that the 3 of us were meant to be there seeing Santa.

We all got in line and giggled as we told Santa's Helper that she wouldn't need to try too hard to get us to smile for a picture. While waiting patiently for our turn to see Santa I noticed Santa's shirt. The Fabric on his shirt was the same exact fabric of a hospital gown I had ordered off of Etsy while Colten was admitted in the hospital last Christmas. The same cars themed fabric. Colten never ended up getting to wear that hospital gown because he got too sick before it came. I couldn't believe it was the same fabric.

And then it was our turn... Kaylee and Jade stood back and nudged me saying I should go first. As tears filled my eyes, I slowly walked up to Santa, holding the picture of my beautiful Colten. I held out the picture so Santa could see his sweet face and with tears streaming down my face I said to him "This is my son Colten, he died in February while waiting for a heart transplant. This is his first Christmas in Heaven."

Santa looked down to the floor with tears filling his eyes, I have never seen somebody look like they felt so helpless. I told Santa that we had came from Duluth and were making Christmas deliveries for sick kids in the hospital, and you could tell he was so proud of us. We all gathered together for many pictures and had a very special little mini photo session.

Right when we were gathering our bags and thanking Santa for such a special visit, he said "Wait a minute, I'm not done." He looked at me and patted his knee and said "Come here princess." I suddenly felt like a kid again, like my Christmas wish was going to come true.

I went over and sat with Santa as he dug in his bag searching for something.

Santa then pulled out a little blue glass angel and said to me "Whenever you are worried you hold this angel and you squeeze it tight...and all of your worries will go away."

We left with tears streaming down our faces and smiles from ear to ear.

We were lead there on purpose yesterday...what a gift.

"Believe with all of your heart."

Credit: Krista Robertson