Polar Express!

Our Advent calendar activity Friday night was to have a movie night and watch the Polar Express.  I think the movie is so beautiful and this year Stella got into it much more than she has previously.  She asked a ton of questions about the train and told me that she wanted to go on a train to see Santa.  I played it cool, "hmmm, really?  Yeah, that would be fun... we'll see..."  HA HA - inside I was fist pumping and cheering.  She'd fallen right into my plan.  You see, the next day's activity was to ride the Polar Express train!

Saturday we'd planned to get family Christmas pictures taken (which Stella was well aware of) and we hadn't told her about the train.  She asked for her calendar for the day and I "read" it to her but I told her that we were going to get our pictures taken and then go to dinner.  She frowned and said, "well that's not a very exciting activity". Oh Stella, just wait my love!

When we finally got to the train Stella was in disbelief.  Check out that, "is this actually happening?" look on her face, I LOVE it!  She doesn't get excited about doing stuff like this.  You'd think she's not having fun at all.  Actually, she's just soaking up every single second of it.  She will talk about every detail for a long time to come (she actually told me about going to see Scrooge last Christmas - she remembered things I didn't)

Mama and Lu snuggling.  It was SO cold!  Thankfully we'd brought blankets for the girls and our picnic blanket was in my trunk.  It took the entire ride home for my toes to thaw.

The girls

 The whole fam (decent considering we just asked the people next to us to snap one quick pic)

 Santa giving Stella her bell.

He gave one to Lu too with a little, "aww..."  She loved it!

This is it for our Santa pic for the year.  We don't ever do anything with them so there's no way I'm going to take them to the mall for another pic.  I'm perfectly happy!  We actually got a few and I couldn't believe that Lucy didn't mind him at all.  Maybe next year will be the hysterical year - every kid needs to have at least one.

It wasn't fancy, but it was a great outing for our family. I adore making memories with these 3 people, I'm so very lucky to get to be part of their lives.