Out where Nan lives, there is a famous train station that houses all sorts of trains, from very old to very new. They are most famous for the movie studios use of the trains in TV and film. Throughout the year they host events inside the trains, so during Christmastime one of the events they hold is a Santa train... very similar to the Polar Express. When Nan suggested this to me, I jumped on board (no pun intended) and bought tickets for Spencer and me. I'm sure you can guess how excited he was about this event too.
Outside the Train
Meeting the Conductor
Boarding to find our seats... This is Rocky and Piper
(Nan and I both forgot our cameras, so all the pictures are with her iphone).
Nan and I were kind of chuckling. The decorations were pretty cheesy and the "stations" we passed on the way were pretty low quality for the price we paid, but the whole ambiance was seriously just so fun to me, especially because Spencer and the kids were having such a great time. I loved the old fashioned train with the high backed seats. It was completely full, and I think there were four or five train cars.
Riding the Train
Spencer couldn't contain himself, especially when we started moving. It was so funny, and fun, to watch.
Piper, Nan and Rocky
So, the whole concept was that we were riding the train to the North Pole to pick up Santa where we would take him back to the train depot to then be able to sit on his lap and tell him what you wished for. Each way was about 20 minutes. To kill time there were a couple of elves in each train car that handed out cookies, bells, lyrics to the songs which we sang along to and a story reading of The Night Before Christmas.
Shaking the Bell
Singing Frosty
Who Likes Cookies?
Green Christmas Tree Sugar Cookies and chocolate milk
Spencer's not a fan of chocolate milk but he had a fun time dipping his cookie in it.
The conductor coming around to punch tickets... Nan taught Spencer to say "No Money! No Ticket!" Still to this day he goes around saying it.
We should have gotten pictures after he punched it. He did it in the shape of a candy cane.
Santa Visit!!!!
He came around handing out candy canes.
Santa's Train Car
Waiting in Line
Spencer running to see Santa. He wasn't scared at all.
Of course, all he wanted was "trains and train tracks." I wasn't very impressed with this Santa. He barely spoke two words to the kids. The kids didn't care. Rocky was starting to get a little suspicious though.
The train depot was in a little old town in Fillmore and they had a cute post office that used to be the old town post office. The kids could write letters to Santa.
(Originally I had thought Rocky wrote this but per Nan's comment below it wasn't. And it makes more sense. I was surprised to think he had written it.)
We had such a good time and would definitely do it again. It really was a fun way to get in the Christmas mood (I hadn't really gotten into it by then). Thanks Nan for always pulling something fun together!
My mom is the children's chorister for our church in her local area. When we were in California on the Sunday before Christmas, all the children dressed up in nativity costumes and went from room to room singing songs about Christmas. Xanthe and Xoe were actually supposed to go to Young Women's, but for some reason they were having anxiety about it. Usually they are good about new situations, but I think they were just tired of going to so many different ones. They had just gotten back from their dad's where they go to Young Women's there as well. I didn't fight it and I was proud of them for coming up with a compromise. They traveled along with the children until they reached the Young Women room. Then they just stayed there with the Young Women. Just like I suspected, they had a great time.
This post is about the nativity and how cute they look dressed up. I was bummed I only had one good picture that my dad had taken, and then I remembered Beth, the Young Women's President, good friend AND sister to MY sister-in-law (did that make sense?) posted on Instagram. Then, lo and behold, I found a bunch of pictures on our iPad that the girls had taken. So cute. Enjoy! Oh, and P.S., the title of this post came from the subject line that my dad titled his email with. I thought it was a perfect title. Thanks, Dad!
Xanthe started off as Mary but then figured it would be better for a little girl so she changed into being an angel.
Not sure why she's sad. She must be sad about riding the donkey to Bethlehem... or maybe not wanting to be Mary in general. :) She changed to an angel.
My beautiful mom getting ready for the program.
This was a display in the Primary room for people to see if they came in.
My Xoe angel
Xoe, Xanthe and cousin, Eliza Buhrley
Beth's picture. I'm not surprised as she is a professional photographer. Jealous she could capture such a great shot with her iPhone.
For those of you who don't know who Nanette is, she is my sister right next in line after me in our family of 8. She lives in Camarillo and just like I wrote in my Rants and Musings Post about our Non-Traditional Traditions, whenever I go to California, I always make a trip to her house, sometimes two or three times. I'm gonna copy and paste what I wrote then because I'd just be repeating myself...
-I always visit Nanette's B&B. Her house is so amazing to stay at. She's the most awesome host, makes the most amazing food, shows you amazing epiphanies she's had you want to become a better person, and makes you feel totally at home, but doesn't make you feel like you are getting in the way with her daily life. You sort of just join in with her goings-on (you actually become a part of it... she has you come to her block party craft days, school singalongs, and drives around to see their Christmas lights). She also tries to help you get stuff crossed off your "list", gives you coupons for buying presents, and on top of that plans extra fun outings. I might get stressed out with hosting like she does, but if she is, she never lets on. I love her kids with all my heart and I love hanging out with her husband Myles cuz he's seriously a cool cat and so laid back... yet such a task accomplisher as well.
Two days after we arrived in California, the girls were whisked off by Southwest Airlines to Utah to see their father. It was just Spencer and I so I hopped on the Amtrak train since Nanette's house is about 1 1/2 hours from my mom's and I didn't have a car, it's the best way to travel there. Tell me you could only imagine Spencer's excitement with this trip.
Getting there was interesting. It was raining and we had to park pretty far away. I had only one bag for both Spencer and I, but I also had both our coats, my laptop bag and even considered bringing a stroller. I thought I had plenty of time but couldn't get the ticket machine working. Little did I know the ticket machine was not for the train I wanted and a nice woman pointed me to the ticket office (that clearly had NO sign saying ticket office). I was used to train travel being in Europe but all of this threw me off a little. So as I'm lugging everything around, all spencer wants to do is jump in the puddles.
I get into the ticket office and there is some lady asking a bunch of "would be" questions about a trip a few days later. I was really stressed but finally the ticket agent asked her to let a few people get tickets. The train literally pulled into the station as he was printing out my tickets and I was dragging Spencer by his arm to jump onto the train. Thank goodness for a little elderly couple that needed extra assistance or I would not have made it. Sorry, but as you can tell, I had no time for pictures.
Spencer, of course was doing his "shakey man" as we call it, and was in total shock and excitement. He's used to trains but it seems like he gets just as excited each and every time. I had brought our iPad so he spent most of the time watching movies or looking out the window for more trains when we'd pull into another station. Seriously, Nan, this is the only way to travel.
In Camarillo waiting for Nanny to pick us up...
A picture Nanette took as she was driving up.
Cousins!!!!!
I'm sad I didn't take more pictures while we were there. I started to get into Instagram, so I posted a lot on there. for those of you with an iDevice, Instagram is pretty amazing. I won't go off on too much of a tangent, but it's all about pictures, and most people think it makes good photos look bad, but it's actually making your crappy cameraphone pictures look better. But there is a newsfeed to see your friends' pictures and comment on them. I'm actually loving it more than Facebook. Anyway, it would be great to see some of you on there.
Okay, so here are the limited pictures I have at Nan's house. Some of the things we did were take walks to the park,
Christmas shopping (it's a bummer when babies fall asleep in the car on the way to go shopping),
make Christmas goodies, get over jetlag,
(yes that's me next to him, I think this was about 2 p.m.)
attempt to stay up late but we always fell asleep early, me next to Spencer, her next to her kids or at the computer, and we attempted to attend the Startup Cookie Exchange (our extended family's annual get together).
These were my cookies that I had on a nice tray but they kept sliding around so I dumped them onto a cookie sheet. I ended up overbaking them so they were hard. I tossed them eventually, but not until I was fed up of holding the cookie sheet on my lap.
The minute we got onto the freeway it was stopped traffic. It basically would have taken us 3 hours to get there so we got off the freeway and tried to kill time shopping. We ended up at TJ Maxx which was very dangerous to be at. Spencer found an entire Thomas section with every track set he has seen on his fliers. He literally started dumping them into my cart.
(Don't worry, I didn't get all of these, but I did get quite a few. It was tempting that they had so many of the ones we'd usually have to buy online.)
Spencer spent a lot of time obsessing over this track that Nanette has.
This is Spencer at Nan's house cleaning up the wooden track so he can have the blue track again. You can't hear it but he's singing, "Clean Up, Clean Up."
Nanny loves Spencer and Spencer LOVES Auntie Nanny. They both bonded a lot while we were there. It was really cute to watch.
Saying goodbye and going on the train...this is in Camarillo.
Saying Goodbye... We were a little nervous we had gotten on the wrong train.
Arriving in Fullerton to seriously beautiful weather.
