Polar Express

The Saturday after Thanksgiving took Timo and Cameron on the Polar Express! The CA state RR museum has this adventure every year and it's very popular...I found out just how popular when I was trying to get tickets. Our good friends the Moys have a membership to the museum and allowed me to use their membership to purchase the tickets early, thank goodness because I'm not sure we would have been able to otherwise. Some other friends of ours have been on this trip before and said it was well worth it. So we headed up to Sacramento for our Polar Express Adventure! But first, the children got Christmas jammies and the book before we left.

The whole family is encouraged to wear their PJs but we thought it safe just to have the kids in theirs.  The whole build up to the actual train ride was overwhelming...they had the whole place decked out.

Just waiting in line and hearing the Polar Express songs were a huge build up.  By the time the train pulled in and we were ready to board, the kids were ecstatic with excitement!  The depot played "The Polar Express" over the loud speaker and Timo and Cameron had the most fun marching toward the train singing and dancing.  We boarded, settled in our seats and were ready!

As the train rolled forward, on cue, the hot chocolate and cookies began to flow...just like the book.   Then the dancers came through and gave us a great show!

They started reading the story over the speaker and the kids followed along...Timo knew the story by heart because we had checked it it out from the library a few weeks before...and read it over 100000 times.  They finally got their own copy of the book a few days before.

Timo and Cameron were so excited to see the conductor come through, punch their tickets and sign their book!

We finally made it to the North Pole!  We were on the wrong side of the train to see much out the window but the excitement to see Santa was building beyond control!!  Finally!  Santa boarded and the children were so excited to see him.  Santa passed out the first Christmas gift, which Timo is still treasuring.

We finished reading the story on our way back to the station.  Such a magical time for Timo and Cameron, I hope they enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed watching them experience it!

Afterward you could go see Santa, which both children were eager to do, only Timo got a little shy as we approached the jolly ol' St. Nick.  Cameron took the plug and climbed up to rattled off her whole list.  Timo decided it was better to just stand in front of Santa and share his Christmas wishes...that was just fine by me.