Tuesday, December 22, 2009

All Aboard!!!

Last night, I took a ride on the Polar Express! Really! It was a real steam locomotive and everything!

Apparently the Texas State Railroad does some big To-Do every year for the holidays, and this year it was the Polar Express. One of Noel's coworkers had his wife & 2 kids come to visit him here in Fairfield, and they're big fans of the movies. They invited me to go.

I had no idea what to expect. I haven't seen the movie or read the book. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, memories drudged up from commercials that it's a cartoon, has Tom Hanks as one of the voices, and involves....a train. That goes to a polar place. Um. That's as much as I knew.

Thankfully I had the kids (4 & 6 years old) there to explain things to me. For example, they told me we'd be getting hot cocoa from the train chef. Which we did!



They explained we'd go to the North Pole, which we did! (No photos of that, sorry! It's too magical for photos, and also I'm so shaky when I take flashless pics they end up looking like Lightning Bugs Gone Wild.)

They explained that we'd get to see Santa, which we did!



(Please note large cowboy hat in the way. Can you tell we're in Texas?)

They said that the conductor would come around and punch our ticket, which he did!



They explained that we'd get a bell (the elf is holding one up), which we did!



When I asked the 4 year old why we needed bells, she looked at me very seriously and said, "I can't explain that, it's too important to the movie." Ahem. Excuse my ignorance.

All in all it was a really enjoyable event. And there were HUNDREDS of people there. In their pajamas, which I also wasn't prepared for. Funny - there were lots of adults in their pjs, not just the kids. Had I but known....

1 comment:

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