December 5.

One of the highlights of this Christmas season I am sure.

We surprised the girls by going to the “Polar Express”.

Now – that may be a bit misleading.

It is, afterall, a regular old metra commuter train, with a few icicles and tinselly garland strung up.

Except to a kid – it’s so much more.

They love the train. they love being surprised (they thought we were going to a new church that you have to ride the train to – this, in and of itself, would have been enough of an awesome surprise for them!) And they love Santa.

Put all three together – and you have a very good day indeed.

We had to take miss KQ all hooked up to oxygen and sugar water since she was still all wonky-like from the last two days, so that made it a bit more difficult to maneuver through the bitterly icy weather on the platform with 8932 other soccer moms and their offspring….ok i worked really hard to not be grumpy during it, so i’m not gonna be grumpy now in the retelling. and really – it was just so much fun, we managed to get our own little enclave of seats in the back of a car, out of the way, and so it WAS fun.

They had a lot of different characters going through the train – Scrooge, the Disney princesses, random clowns….it was like a rabid codiene induced dream….but the kids loved it. and i mean L-O-V-E-D it. All except for the balloons. Poor little sensory issues girl – she wanted to touch the animal balloon so badly but just could NOT bring herself to reach out and touch it! I know we shouldn’t have been laughing at her as hard as we were, but it was SO cute to watch that internal struggle!!! And then towards the end, she finally got over the fear, and then wanted EVERYONE’s balloon and we had to track Jiggles the clown back down to make another reindeer for the near-volcanic meltdown of her darling older sister…..whose balloon she managed to pop. I still have no idea how. It was a teensy bit crazy with six people in the space that 2-3 normally take up, plus four winter coats, an oxygen tank, a feeding pump, four reindeer balloons, three coloring books, and 18 packs of fruit snacks. Plus my three cameras. And a partridge in a pear tree.

Anyways – it was fun family memories. I loved watching my babies’ faces as the train picked up speed, and Santa came through, and he solemnly asked them if they had been good, and it occurred to them for the first time in roughly 11 and a half months that maybe they really HADN’T been as good as they could have…priceless.

And on the way home, as they were reading the Polar Express book, and they were handing out silver bells to all the kids – i actually welled up with tears in my eyes. I hope they always just believe.

And then we came home and had Chipotle and the girls and I made Shrinky Dinks all afternoon while Ben threw away memories. I mean crap. From the basement. And made it look rockin’ better!

It was a fun day.

and the shrinky dinks were for gifts. Not just cause we wanted to burn our fingerprints off for grins and giggles.

 

And that is all I can remember.

terra.