Santa Train and Christmas Tree

This morning, and by morning I mean eaaaaarly morning, we headed to North Bend to the Northwest Railway Museum to take a ride on the Santa Train. This is something we've never done before and decided we'd give it a try. It was great, but Mark and I both agreed there would be no need to turn it into a tradition. The gist of the Santa Train is this: you take a 20 minute ride on an old diesel train up to the depot in Snoqualimie. The train is decked out in festive colors, with tinsel and stockings and lights all around. There's a (possibly crazy) old man who leads Christmas carols (or actually just one...Rudolph...over and over) during the trip. Once there, you get to meet with Santa (after a hefty wait in line) and pass through an old kitchen car where they use an old coal stove to bake fresh cookies and make hot chocolate. Then you get back on the train and head back to North Bend. Like I said, really fun but definitely not tradition-worthy. As a side note, there were a ton of crying kids at that thing and boy did I have to give my boys extra big hugs for being troopers and not complaining, even once. Normally I try not to do the whole 'wow, my kids are so awesome compared to everyone else's' thing, but after watching a much-too-old boy throw a mammoth, 15-minute long screaming, kicking, nearly foaming-at-the-mouth tantrum while waiting to see Santa, well yeah, I did that whole 'wow, my kids are so awesome compared to everyone else's' thing.

Here are the boys waiting to board the train:



All aboard!

Happy faces:

Gus stood the entire train ride, both ways:

In a rail car, enjoying our freshly baked cookies:

Max sat on Santa's lap and told him he wants a DS game:

Gus didn't want to sit with him, but he still told him he wants a Samurai playset:

Jack just gave Santa a knuckle-smash and left it at that. It's okay, Santa was cool with it.

After the Santa Train and a yummy brunch in Snoqualmie, we headed to a local tree farm in search of our tree. The freezing cold tempurature helped us choose this little beauty. We said 'yep, it's great. Cut it down and let's get out of here!'

And that's just what we did:

Here she is in her lovely, warm new home. We think she fits in just fine.