The Milner Family

Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Polar Express

This weekend the three of us went with Eric, Amanda and Banks to ride the Polar Express at the Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum south of Birmingham in Calera, AL. We drove up early Friday morning so Sam and Banks would have a chance to rest up before our 6:30 train ride that night.

As soon as we parked at the museum, the boys spotted some old trains and wanted to climb and play on them. Then we headed inside the museum to pickup our tickets and wait for the train to arrive.

This is a picture of four VERY excited boys!

The three of us posed for a quick picture in one of the old trains...

before Sam and Banks went to play on some of the equipment they had outside. They sure did work hard!

Around 6:15 we heard the "toot, toot" (as Sam kept saying) and saw the bright light in the distance and knew the train was heading our way. On the ride to the North Pole the Polar Express story was read over the speaker ...

and we followed along in the book that we brought with us. After we finished reading the story, some of Santa's elves handed out bells for everyone to ring and we sang Christmas carols while we were riding. It wasn't long before the train started slowing down and we could see Santa's workshop and Santa and Mrs. Clause were out front waving at everyone - we had arrived at the North Pole!

Santa and Mrs. Clause came aboard the train to visit all of the children and Sam was absolutely amazed by them both! He especially like Mrs. Clause and wouldn't even take his eyes off of her for the picture. After the visit from Santa, we had chocolate chip cookies and chocolate milk and the elves passed out a Polar Express ornament to everyone and a gingerbread man beanie baby to all of the kids.

Before it was time to leave the North Pole, the conductor walked through to check on everyone and we snapped his picture with Sam. I'm judging by the look on Sam's face that he wasn't so sure about this man he didn't know!

To make a long story short, all of the sugar from the milk and cookies kept our bed partner up for quite a few hours after his normal bedtime but somehow we managed to drag ourselves out of bed this morning for a little shopping at the Summit before we headed back to Jackson. It had some great stores that we enjoyed going in and we even played a little while in the toy department of Saks. Sam found him two VERY large furry friends that he wanted to take home with him but...

he settled for the cute little pup in the picture instead. He was definitely more of Sam's size and we decided to name him Saks.

We had a wonderful time experiencing the excitement of Christmas through the eyes of these two little boys and look forward to going to ride the train again someday!