This weekend we made a trip to the Great Smokey Mountain Railroad in Bryson City, NC. We were headed there to ride the Polar Express! Elizabeth was very excited about it. It's one of her favorite holiday movies. It was a long 3 1/2 hour drive. We headed out shortly after picking Elizabeth up from preschool. We'd expected that the girls would fall asleep and get a good nap in on the way up there. Haha! Of course, that didn't happen. They only napped for about an hour each. That is not that big of a deal for Elizabeth, but it is a huge deal for Katherine. We knew we could potentially have our hands full with her.
We arrived to find a good amount of people waiting and all of the kids dressed in their pajamas. We brought the girls Christmas pajamas to change into once we got our tickets. The kids received golden tickets as a souvenir. We had about 20 minutes before it was time to board and Katherine wanted to run in any direction that she possibly could.Surprisingly, it was actually a pretty mild night as far as the weather went. We certainly didn't need the winter hats and gloves that we brought. There were even people on the train the opened their windows (a little annoying for those of us with small kids). Katherine immediately wanted her window open and I thought for certain we were going to see her throw a huge fit. We found something else to distract her and she was fine.
When the train started moving, Elizabeth snuggled in close to Dennis. I don't think she was too sure about it. Katherine didn't notice at first, but then she finally sat down and started rocking out to movement of the train. She thought it was pretty neat.
Then the fun began. First the girls golden tickets were punched. Then we were served hot chocolate. Neither one of the girls were too into that. They did love their snack which was Santa shaped chocolate covered marshmallow. They both ate about half of that. After that they listened to part of the Polar Express book being read. That was followed by a stop at the North Pole to pick up Santa. As we approached the North Pole there were a line of homes all decorated with lights for the Holiday and a lit up Santa's sleigh and reindeer. Both girls had their faces plastered to the windows looking at the lights.
We sang Christmas Carols until Santa arrived to our train car. Everyone was required to sing unless you wanted to do a solo. YIKES! You bet we all sang! Santa finally arrived about half way through the Twelve Days of Christmas (which I'm more familiar with the Elmo version that Elizabeth's had me singing for the last couple of weeks).
Elizabeth was excited to see Santa. He brought each of the girls a bell and posed for a picture with them. Katherine was not to sure about him, but we were able to snap a quick shot before she squirmed away from him. He asked them what they wanted for Christmas. Elizabeth's answer was no surprise. She wants a kitty cat. Santa explained that he can't take a real kitty cat on his sleigh because they don't like to fly so he'd have to leave that one up to Mommy and Daddy. Katherine didn't offer anything up, but Santa guessed that she'd like a new dolly. She nodded. They both told Santa, "Thank you and bye-bye!" It was cute. We continued to sing almost all the way back to the train station. Then we tucked the girls into their carseats and put in the polar express movie for the ride home. They both nodded of about a half hour into the trip home. It was a lot of fun.
You can see additional pictures here.
