Polar Express!

Here in Arizona we are very lucky.  You can travel about 3 hours north of Phoenix, to the Grand Canyon Railway, and find a magical tunnel.  It is a tunnel where you go through on a train and it transports you thousands of miles to the North Pole in a matter of 30 minutes!  It is hard to get tickets sometimes, but Matt managed to get some this year and we went last weekend.  It was Magical for sure!

The kids LOVED it.  All the kids wear their jammies on the train - just like in the book/movie.

We had our very own Chef who served us Cookies and Hot, Hot, Hot Chocolate!

Then the Conductor punched our tickets and then read the book to us. 
Finally, we pulled up to the North Pole, and all the kids watch out the window to catch the 1st glimpse of him!

After a driving by a short tour of the buildings and workshops, we headed back towards the time warp tunnel...and had a rousing sing-a-long of Christmas Carols.

Then...to our surprise we had a visitor!  Santa had jumped on our train when we were at the North Pole and he was here!

And he brought a present for each of us!  A Silver Bell from his sleigh - just like in the story!

When we arrived back in Williams, AZ we met up with our friends, the McCray's, who had coincidentally scheduled a trip for the same day as us! We had Four Very Happy Kids!

The sparkly eyes, and happy smiles show it was a magical night for us all.

It also happened to be the night that our beloved U of A Wildcats were playing our arch nemisis - the "yucky" ASU Sun Devils.  We knew we'd miss the 1st half of the game, but thought we'd be back at our hotel in time to watch the 2nd half.  It turned out our hotel had Direct TV - but did not carry Fox Sports!  So we were going to try to find a sports bar/restaurant to watch it.  However, we had very sleepy kids at this point.  So - we let our annoying good parenting voice take over and headed back to the hotel and watch our phones for score updates.  Our good deed was rewarded as the Wildcats came back and WON the game they were never expected to!  Yeah Cats! 

What a great weekend!!!