This past weekend we went up to Bryson City, NC to take a ride on the Polar Express! It was a long drive, but we had a lot of fun. When we go again, however, we’ll make a weekend of it(maybe go to the Biltmore house, too??) and take the night train. That way you can see all the lights actually ON when you go by all the little houses on the way to the North Pole. It wasn’t quite as magical in the daylight! Also, according to some things I’d read elsewhere, depending on where you go, you may or may not actually stop and get off at the North Pole. This is one of the trains where stop and pick up Santa. You don’t get off and go to him. I thought we did, so I was a little disappointed by that. But…the kids had fun, as you’ll see here. One of Tucker’s friends(and his mommy, who is a friend of mine) joined us on the trip. Isn’t he a cutie??
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Tucker has kept us laughing as he has begun to learn Christmas songs and sayings. Here are my favorites right now(and I’m sure I’ll add more!):
“Smashing through the snow on a one-horse open sleigh…”
“We wish you a very Christmas. We wish you a very Christmas. We wish you a very Christmas, and a happy two years.”
“Silent night. Holy night. All is gone. All is bright…” (Apparently Tucker doesn’t know the word calm-does this surprise anyone? 🙂 )
We’ve decorated our Christmas tree…and *tried* to take pictures for Christmas Cards, but nobody seems to want to cooperate for either of these! Tucker wants to un-decorate the tree. Emmie just wants to walk around ringing a bell. And do you know how hard it is to get both of them to look at me so that I can take a picture??? Oh, well…we’ll try again another day-maybe even this afternoon after naps! But for now, here are some pictures from the tree decorating!
We went today to pick out our Christmas tree. We go to this family-owned tree farm out in the country called Gay’s Christmas Tree Farm. It’s a cool place. They obviously have trees, but also a hayride and hot chocolate and hot boiled peanuts. Of course Tucker says “pea-nitz”. Just use your imagination to figure out what that sounds like outloud. He kept running around and saying “I wan pea-nitz! I wan pea-nitz!” It was very funny!
Anyway, the pictures that you see up above are from the tree farm. The first one is Tucker with the Charlie Brown-esque tree that he liked. It doesn’t look as bad in the photo as it did in person. And the others are of us on the hayride.
When we left the tree farm, I remembered that we were close to the “Lights in the South” display in Grovetown. I kind of remembered where it was, but it took a little help from my friendly computer-savy guy to actually get us there. (Thanks, Chris!) Tucker had originally said that he didn’t want to go, but once we got there he was really into it! He loved all the lights, and he was excited to take another hayride. It’s a mile and a half of lights! My favorite is the very end where they have all these white lights and snowflakes. It’s probably the closest I’ll ever see to a White Christmas! Anyway, we took some pictures of all of us, but most of them didn’t turn out. This one, however, did…and I’m so glad. I love how sweet and cute Emmie looks!
