Polar Express

Early in 2014 I thought about buying tickets for the Polar Express, but wasn't sure what would be happening with my pregnancy.  So I put it off and pretty much forgot about it...until the holidays started getting closer.  And we had no tickets.  Ugh.  Richelle and I looked at dates we could still get tickets, but they were super limited with what was left and Mike really wanted to go...but works crappy shift work and couldn't miss two days of work.  We had pretty much decided we couldn't do it this year when Richelle called and asked one more time...and could we go without Mike?  He agreed that we could go without him and he's be fine, so we quickly bought tickets and booked a hotel room...and that was that.

I worked most of the day before we left for Flagstaff.  We arrived in Flagstaff, checked into our hotel room, and went out for dinner...then it was time to head to the Polar Express for our trip to the North Pole.  

We were a few minutes behind schedule, so I didn't even change Blip into his jammies.  And there was NO way I was finding jammies to fit this pregnant belly...and none of the boys had their jammies on, so it was perfect.

We only waited a few minutes before we loaded into our train car.  It ended up being only about 1/2 full, so that was really nice!  Blip seemed to enjoy the entire experience...the cookies, the story, the singing, and seeing Santa.  He was pretty excited to meet Santa.  This is the first year he's understood enough to care about any of it, so it was super fun for me to watch his reactions.

I'm so glad we went! We all had a good time on the train...and then headed back to the hotel to sleep.  The next morning Richelle took the boys swimming while I got ready.  After everyone was packed and we were loaded into the car we drove to find some snow.  There wasn't a lot on the ground, but just enough to touch and toss a snow ball or two.  Blip, of course, LOVED it...and we only had to spend a few minutes in the cold. 

Poor Jake threw up in the car after getting car sick, so luckily he felt better the rest of the day after that incident.  And that was after the poor kid cut his mouth wide open in the hotel room before bed the night before.  It was a gaping wound...luckily it stopped bleeding and he slept, so we decided it didn't need a stitch.  I think Jake hurts himself on every trip...luckily this wasn't bad enough for us to all load up in freezing weather and head to the ER.  Whew!

I hope we do Polar Express every year...it was such a fun experience and I know Blip loved it.