Upscale sleigh ride

Gary Moskowitz

Alyssa Rountree celebrated an early Christmas on Friday by eating a

cheeseburger piled with lettuce, onions and the like, washing it down

with a strawberry milkshake.

But it was pulling into the drive-through lane in a limousine with

Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus that really made the trip to In-N-Out one

to remember.

Alyssa and five other Fremont Elementary School students were

selected to ride in the limousine and get a free lunch from the

popular fast-food restaurant because they were the top sellers of

wrapping paper and gifts during the school’s annual holiday

fund-raiser.

Stephanie Cortes, Garrett Jacob, Paisha Fellows, Madison Gabor and

Corina Wolf joined Alyssa in the limousine.

“This is my sixth year in a row going in the limo,” said Alyssa,

10. “I love it. It’s fun. I guess I just like riding in limos.”

Todd Thornbury dressed up in a white beard and a red-and-white

suit to portray Santa Claus on Friday, while Fremont Principal

Cynthia Livingston dressed up as Mrs. Claus, wearing a large, red

velvet dress, a bonnet and shoes with bells on them.

Thornbury’s wife, Laura, teaches sixth grade at Fremont, and his

daughter, Madison, is a sixth-grader at the school.

Thornbury and Livingston, in full costume, stopped by every

classroom to ask children how they have been behaving, and gave each

student a candy cane.

Thornbury told students that the broken candy canes were the

“lucky” candy canes, because Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer had

stepped on them.

Thornbury and Livingston have dressed up like the Clauses each of

the past seven years. They showed up to school in Thornbury’s red

1965 Corvette convertible before visiting classrooms and going to

In-N-Out.

“Mrs. Claus keeps me coming back each year,” Thornbury joked.

Livingston said her main challenge was to try to keep her students

from recognizing her underneath the Mrs. Claus costume.