Polar Express

The kids have loved the book for years, and last year I heard about a train in North Carolina that replicated most of the trip taken in the book. Scheduling and life got in the way last year and I completely forgot about it until just after Thanksgiving this year. Then it hit me that I have kids that are growing up really really fast, and the magic and awe around all things Christmas, including that book, may be short-lived. I quickly hopped online, moved a few photo shoots around and grabbed tickets for the four of us to take a holiday train ride. The only available time slot for the only day that worked for us was 8:30PM; that meant we had to stay in NC for the night after deboarding the train. Perfect for a quick family trip!

The day before we left, I told the kids to pack a small bag because we were going to drive to the Carolinas to take a train to find snow (no mention of the Polar Express at all). Our car DVD player, which only gets used on long car rides, failed us, so the drive up was a little more challenging. Eli has fallen into the habits of his mommy; he is a total bookworm. But Maddux doesn't have the attention span to do anything not involving talking or singing for more than five minutes, so the ride would be fine for a few minutes, followed by a few minutes of Maddux bursting out in a very loud singing voice while Eli loudly protested. Joy. We did stop a few times to do short short short hikes on the side of the road.

Once we arrived in town, we grabbed some lunch and checked into our hotel. We walked around town a little, but the cold and our fatigue at the *late* hour of 7PM made it less than fun to kill time before our later train ride (18-degree windchill!). We opted to drive around and look at a few neighborhoods of holiday lights before getting the kids dressed in their PJ's for the train.

Once we boarded, the kids woke up big time. We were able to sit in a 4-seat section, facing each other. Almost as soon as we were seated, we were served a small thermos of hot cocoa. The kids were in heaven. And minutes later, chocolate chip cookies. Seriously!??! The train drove through some woods, on the way to the North Pole, as a ticket checker came and punched the kids' tickets. Then a hobo (is that the right word?) walked through our car and said, 'hello'. After a few more minutes, they played a recorded reading of the Polar Express book and the car assistants walked around to show the book pages to those of us that forgot to pack our own book. Soon after that we arrived in the North Pole and could see the decorated houses of Santa, Frosty, some of the elves, and Rudolph. (The kicker here was that Maddux was a critic: "That's not REALLY Santa's house. But that's not REALLY Frosty's house. I don't think that is actually an elf's house..")

Once we passed the houses, we saw Santa and his reindeer outside of the window on the other side of the train. Joy....the kids were giddy. Santa was waving and the excitement in train was everywhere. A few minutes later, the train reversed and we started to sing some Christmas carols. The kids loved this, especially when we sang "The 12 Days of Christmas" and our family got to be the first day. Somewhere around the end of the song, Santa boarded our train car and entered from behind Maddux's back. She was the first child he talked to, and given her inability to speak to him, I think he caught her by surprise. She just smiled and he gave her a bell. When he asked Eli what he wanted for Christmas, he grinned and said, "A football". Life is good. He also got a bell before Santa moved on to another family.

Eventually we returned to our boarding area and we drove back to the hotel. The kids passed out pretty quickly, which was good because we had a full day on our drive home. The weather was much nicer, so we stopped for a real hike at Tallulah Gorge. The trail was about a mile around the top and then we opted to take the stairs down to the water and back up. 1100 all together (yup, half of those were coming back up). The kids did REALLY well. Eli even ran up most of them with me.

So so glad we took this trip because it will definitely be harder for the next few years, and as much as I hate to think about it, after that the kids may not crave that Christmas magic anymore.