Santa Express

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving Mom and Dad told me they had a surprise for me. I had no idea what it was but we had to drive in the care for a couple hours (now I know it was to Boone).

We had lunch and hit the road. When we arrived I still had no idea what we were doing. We parked the car and went into a building. There were quite a lot of people in there. Dad and I went to the bathroom and when we came out Mom handed me a gold paper and said, "Here's your ticket." I looked around at some of the train things in the room. Then Mom pointed to the wall of windows and glass door and said, "What's that out there?" I said, "A train!" She then asked, "Do you know what we're going to do?" I said, "RIDE THAT TRAIN!!" I was so excited. Once the door opened to let us board I headed out not caring if Mom or Dad were around or not. I had one mission and it was to get on that train. I saw a conductor and he punched my ticket and everything - just like the Polar Express.

When we got on the train a couple kids behind us were singing songs from Polar Express. That made me smile. The train car inside was decorated with Christmas lights and a couple wreaths. The outside had one car that was all decorated with Christmas lights and decorations.

We finally headed out on our train ride after about a half hour of boarding and waiting. On our ride to the "North Pole" there was a man who read a poem and a Christmas book written by a local author. I mostly enjoyed just watching out the window. To get to the North Pole we had to go over this really high bridge. That was pretty cool to see below us. It took about a half hour to get to the North Pole. When we arrived there were Christmas lights, a lighted tree and a small house that I think Santa must live in. We stopped in the North Pole to watch for reindeer while they served us hot chocolate and a cookie. As we ate our cookie and drank our hot chocolate the conductor brought Santa into our train car! He gave each child a sleigh bell. I thought that was so cool!

After Santa went back to his house we took off back for the train station. On our way back we sang Christmas Carols. It was such a magical day for me. I loved it and Mom and Dad said they had fun watching me have such a fun day.

To top off the day we stopped in Ames to eat at one of Mom and Dad's favorite restaurants - Hickory Park. I liked it because Rudolph was on tv in the waiting area and I got to have chocolate ice cream after dinner. Yum!!!