This Is The Polar Express!

The day after Thanksgiving we headed out for Calera, Alabama, to ride The Polar Express.  If you don't know, The Polar Express, is a great Christmas movie that McKenzie and especially Matt absolutely love.  When we found out that Calera had a train ride based on The Polar Express we knew we had to go.

We stopped in Tuscaloosa at Target (the first of three Target trips during the weekend) and made it to the hotel in Calera Friday afternoon.  Our hotel had cookies and hot chocolate every afternoon and evening and we enjoyed that quite a bit!  Here's a picture of McKenzie and Betty enjoying some hot chocolate and Matt mesmerized by the movie, Elf, in the lobby.

Here's Matt playing with a little train under the Christmas tree in the lobby.

After a day of shopping and watching the last quarter of the Bulldogs' whipping of Ole Miss, the kids and Betty put on their pajamas and we headed to The Polar Express.

Here are the kids on the engine before the train left.

This is the car that we rode in - the Silver Maple.  Matt thought that he was going to get to run and jump on the train as it was going like the boy does in the movie.  He also thought he was going to get to ski on the top of the cars like in the movie.  He wasn't too disappointed, though.

They gave us each a ticket and the conductor punched them just like in the movie.

Betty had to get an ornament to commemorate the trip.

Matt was on cloud nine.  I love this picture of him looking at his ticket against the window like he couldn't believe he was actually on The Polar Express.

On the way to the North Pole, some of Santa's elves got on the train and gave all the kids a bell from Santa's sleigh like the one the boy in the movie got.  Matt is hiding behind McKenzie in this picture.

I was the only one of us who didn't wear pajamas.  We looked for some for me Saturday at the mall but couldn't find anything.

Santa and Mrs. Claus!  When we got to the North Pole and saw Santa outside, Matt's eyes got very wide and he whispered to me, "Daddy!  Tell Santa I want a wot of trains!".  He was too scared to tell Santa himself.  You can see in the picture that Matt was a little overwhelmed.

Next came the cooks with the cookies and chocolate milk.

Finally, the kids waved goodbye to Santa and Mrs. Claus and we headed back to the station.  We had a wonderful time on the train and the whole weekend.  We had fun eating and shopping and going to Target and going to Target and going to Target.  OK, maybe that last Target trip wasn't so much fun, but the rest of the weekend was great!