A Trip to the North Pole on the Polar Express!

Over the summer (while we were at the beach to be exact), Linds mentioned taking a trip to the NC Transportation Museum to have the cousins ride the Polar Express!  Last year we decided to start doing activities or outings as our Christmas presents to the kids (and grandparents) rather than items wrapped under the tree.  We had a successful first year at Disney on Ice in 2021 and moved forward with planning our 2022 Christmas celebration!  We thought this was the perfect year to do the Polar Express as our boys are getting older and it will be more challenging to convince them to wear matching pajamas and board a train to the magical "North Pole".  They embraced all the fun plans for the evening and I think everyone (young and old) had a memorable train ride to the North Pole and back!  Everyone got hot chocolate, a cookie and a special bell from Santa.  I will always remember the excitement of the kids jumping up and down as the train pulled into the station to pick us up for an actual train ride complete with a stop at the North Pole where we got off the train, saw elves dancing about and even Santa made his annual appearance and handed out the first gift of Christmas!  Now I can't wait to watch the movie and continue our countdown to Christmas!

We've been celebrating Christmas at school too!  There has been a mischievous elf that has been moving around my office.  One day he even put Santa hats on all of our pictures!  The kids love seeing where that tricky elf has moved each day! 

We were able to catch our local Christmas parade last weekend!  Some of our favorite people were in the parade as well!

We've had daily dress up days!  Here is plaid day!  Emmy and I matched!

The kids did an awesome job at our church's children's program. They had small group singing parts and our 5th graders did an excellent job with their lines in the Christmas County Spelling Bee play.  I've been helping on Wednesday nights as we prepared for this performance and it was always one of my favorite hours of the week.  These kids started practicing in August and it was evident that their hard work paid off.  Maddox somehow found himself near a microphone and his voice was heard loud and clear on each song.... thank goodness he knew the words since the songs have been playing in our car since August as well! ;)