On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we headed up to Georgetown with the whole family for our 3rd Annual Santa train ride!! My sister in law discovered this 3 years ago and it has been such a great kick start to the holiday season and we always love the magical feeling it brings to the kids (and to us!) The first year we planned this, we did it as a surprise birthday gift for my father in law and each year since we still celebrate his birthday while kicking off the holidays!
Arriving at the station and getting hot cocoa before boarding the train
The best part about the train is since we have such a large group (20 people!) we usually get an entire train car to ourselves. They asked us to stand to the side while they got our area ready so of course we used it as a photo op :) We tried to get Hads in but that was not happening...
The only downfall to the Santa train is it is too short! It goes by very fast and there is so much that you are trying to do in that time frame that it absolutely flies by! The ride is only about 45 minutes and you meet Santa, tell him what you want for Christmas, take a group picture with him, you get cookies and chips from the elves and Mrs. Claus, you can order drinks (beers, yes please!) and then Santa comes back to give every kid a bell, phew! It is chaos...but a good chaos though :)
My favorite part of the trip was watching Brady. He is at such a great age for Christmas and he was just staring out the window the whole ride! There are tons of decorations and lights outside the window, so pretty!
The original Hoelting crew
6 have turned into 18!
Getting their bells from Santa
Look at Brady's face :)
Our whole group...I can't believe how great this picture turned out! Our whole family plus Craig's Dad's cousins, John & Linda (like another set of Grandparents to us)
Santa & Mrs Claus happened to walk by right when we were taking a family picture...life is all about timing :)
After the train we always head to main street in Georgetown and go to dinner at the same restaurant. It usually is so perfect because the restaurant has this awesome basement that has a pool table and foosball and the last few years we have had the entire basement to ourselves! The kids can run around and we can just stand and mingle instead of being confined to a table. Unfortunately it was more crowded this year and we were in the basement but at a table in the hallway with a lot of other people around. It was HARD!
Our kids did great the first hour and a half but it went downhill quickly. We made a few trips outside so they could run around and that actually was my favorite part...there were tons of Christmas lights up and Christmas music playing and we danced in the street and the kids were sliding on patches of ice. So often the random adventures end up being your best memories :) We eventually gave up and had to throw our money in the middle of the table and make a quick exit before the rest of the gang, lol! We are at a different phase of life with our kids than our siblings so we do our best to keep up but sometimes the little ones just can't hang :)
We still had such a great time celebrating Papa's birthday though and the night was a great kick start to a fun Christmas season!
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