The Polar Express (finally)

I finished the books. And they were awesome. Even the ending, which I had heard some people were really unhappy about. Was it Prim? Was it Coin? Finnick even? Tell me unhappy people, what part was it exactly that put a damper on the intense lovefest for these books you once had going? Because I really liked it all, (even though Mockingjay got a little hard to believe in some instances), I wasn't put off by any of the author's choices and thought it was really, really well done. I need to know what made you curse and throw books across rooms! telllllll meeeeee!!!!

Anyway, what was this post supposed to be about?

Oh yes, the Polar Express!

So that happened like two weeks ago before my life got hijaked by a certain trilogy and extensive amounts of online christmas shopping. But if I recall correctly it was super fun. Even though it rained instead of snowed and the "North Pole" was just a bunch of soggy adults in makeshift elf costumes dancing around like loons outside of the train.

We were seated in the first car of the train, with a section of four seats all to ourselves (sets of two facing each other). The boys wore their pajamas just like in the book and there are a ton of volunteers on the train acting as anyone from the hot chocolate chef, to the conductor, to Santa. And every car gets their own set of "elves" - we had three. Two were cute college girls who spent the evening singing christmas carols with the kids and putting on a pajama fashion show. The third was Linda. Elf Linda was looking a little worse for the wear. She spent the majority of the evening lounging in a section of seats right next to us with her shoes off, stocking feet kicked up, smacking her bubblegum and occassionally drifting off to sleep. She was so magical. The kind of magical that has to sneak off to the bathroom every so often for a cig. And I spent $13.00 on popcorn and chocolate covered pretzels so there's that.

Luckily, Wes and Oren were oblivious to all of this and really did think the whole thing was amazing and exciting and yes, even magical.

The windows kept fogging over and when Wes was engrossed in his song book during the caroling, Josh spelled out WES on the window with his finger. When Wes looked up and saw it I thought he was going to pee his pants. He thought the train did it. It was ridiculously cute. Then Santa showed up and Wes cowered in the corner of his seat and didn't say one word to the guy (as per usual). But Santa did give Wes a sleigh bell, just like in the book, which Wes insisted he take to bed with him that night. We also watched the Polar Express movie about 5 times in a row the next day. So, yeah, I'd say he loved it.

Here are a bunch of pictures that are either too bright because we had to use the flash, too dark because we didn't use it, or we all just have red eye. Either way, completely terrible.

 (elf linda)...

 ...(elf linda's feet)