Family Saturday

Oh what a great day.  We started off the day by getting the kids ready for a "surprise".  The surprise involved something cold and required several layers to be warm throughout.  So we spent probably 20 solid minutes getting the kids in jackets, coats, hats, and mittens.  They were fairly cooperative this morning though, which isn't always the case, but was sure a blessing that started our morning off right.  Then we set off with a few blankets in hand for a ride on the "Polar Express".  Now our children are huge train lovers.  We live two blocks south of the train depot and you can see one of the main tracks from the corner nearest our house and the boys have spent a lot of time in warmer weather sitting at the corner watching the train move back and forth.  This particular train is just for paying passenger rides - like a tour type thing.  I looked into it when we first moved back here to my home town and with four children it's just cost prohibitive for us.  So when I heard that our local library was doing a Polar Express program ON the train this month I called up the library asap and got on the waiting list.  In the end we were blessed that we were able to get on.  So we walked to the tracks because with four kiddos walking was probably about equal in time to loading up the kids, driving there, parking, unloading the kids etc.  And frankly it was a lot simpler to walk out the front door and direct the kids to keep walking.

So we headed off the two blocks to the train.  At this point the boys were starting to realize where we might be going.

Once there we got our tickets and hopped on the train.

There were two coaches and one coach got to hear the story "The Polar Express" on the way to the "North Pole" and then we swapped coaches while those kids met Santa and we got to hear the story.  They had a giant screen tv that displayed the pictures from the book and a man dressed as the conductor read the book.  It was very cool.  Then we got to go to the north pole and meat Santa too.

Now I took pics of all the kids but my flash only works properly when it feels like it and it didn't feel like it for the first two kids.  I feel badly about it but that's life.  So Santa gave each of the children a bell like in the book and a little hot cocoa packet with a candy cane.  Very cute.

After this we boarded the train and headed back to the station.  We took the kids to McDonalds where a whole group of our friends (who also were on the train) were meeting up for lunch and play.  I didn't take any pictures of that.

We all relaxed during nap time and then late in the afternoon we worked on a project I'll post about tomorrow.  Then we decided to have our cocoa from Santa and watch Rudolph.  We have it on DVD so we just watch it whenever it suits us during this season.  Love that movie.  Love the line about getting the women folk back to Christmas Town. It cracks me up every stinking time.

Sawyer loved the singing snowman and especially appreciated when he pulled out his ukelele.  Sawyer grabbed up his own "guitar" and played along.

A few more pics of the kids enjoying the movie together (and ignore the mess it's a lived in house on a Saturday, what can I say?  The living room was spotless and vacuumed at one point yesterday.)  

Sierra was intentionally hiding from the camera.  It was super cute.

She was happy to give me a "cheese" though when I asked her to.

Colton was too engrossed watching to eat much of his make shift dinner.

It always amazes me how much kids move around during movies and yet still seem to enjoy them.

Except Kayd.  He seems to have the sitting still thing down at the ripe old age of 6.

And that was our fantastic family day.  It was such a blessing to make these memories with the kids.  Truly.  Next weekend we have more fun family memories to be made in store too!