Our Winter Get Away

Today was the day! I haven't yet mentioned it here, but a few months back, we decided we were going to take the kids (along with the Wright cousins) to experience the Polar Express!



In Durango, Colorado, there is the Durango/Silverton railroad. In the Winter time they run a mock Polar Express. It is an hour long ride with cocoa, carols, Santa, and sleigh bells. I have been anticipating this weekend for months, and it finally is here. We kept it a secret from the kids. Initially we didn't tell them because it was so far away that it would probably send us to the loony bin with the daily questioning on when it was coming, how long do we have to wait, and can't we just go tomorrow. Then as we got closer, I started to worry about if we weren't going to be able to go because of weather or an illness, so we kept the secret longer. Finally, as it got to this past week, I realized that it would be so fun to just surprise the kids with it on the morning we left. I am SO glad we did. It was really special. I video tapped their reactions this morning when we sat them on the couch and told them....I think they were excited! ***Warning when you view this video, you will leave the blog, to get back you need to use the back button***

SURPRISE!

After we announced what we were going to do for the rest of the day, we were off to pack and head out the door for what we thought would be a 6 hour drive.

I had NO doubts it was going to be a long drive/day, but we managed to make it just a bit longer. It took us 8 hours to get here today. I think we pushed sweet Pax to his breaking point tonight. The poor guy was a victim of mommy and daddy's poor planning and ended up going about 7 hours without eating! We ran into a bit of snow on one of the passes and slowed down our day significantly.

In the end, we made it all mentally intact, and I think the kids kept the "Are we almost there yet?" s to under 300. That is pretty good considering the amount of excitement they were experiencing for what was to come. It helped that we brought the DVD player (Seriously, how in the world did we travel back in the day?). We watched Polar Express and listened to Christmas music for the majority of the drive. It was quite the sticky sweet scene if I do say so myself...well here, take a look for yourself. Here is a pic of the kids watching Polar Express....(this is when we were unaware that we had a good 6 hours still ahead of us and we had already traveled 2 hours).

Tomorrow we will spend the day shopping, swimming, and going to the train museum. Then after dinner, we will get into our jammies (new Christmas jammies I might add) and board the Polar Express for a very magical ride to see Santa.

I can't wait to share it with you!