The Santa Train

We went on a train ride with Santa through some pretty scenic areas of SW Oklahoma today. We were served cookies and milk, listened to non-stop Christmas music and Benjamin got to meet and visit with Old Saint Nick and Mrs. Claus for a while. Santa actually had a gift for each child. Ben got a truck and a rescue hero's movie. He was pretty excited. We all had a great time!

Pictures below.

love,

Jaimee

Getting ready to leave for the train he suddenly realized he had the perfect hat for the occasion and was so excited to put it on. It stayed on for the next 4 hours... at which time it only came off to be replaced by his fire hat so he would be properly dressed to play with his fire truck back at home!

Outside the train with Daddy, about to board.
So excited to have "real" train tickets (we pretend with random scraps of paper all the time)!
Even more excited because Daddy did such a great job of being super excited himself!
Family photo... Ben totally does the closing his eyes thing like I did when I smiled really big as a toddler!
Ben still thinks Santa is Noah from the Bible, but that he likes Christmas too. I'm sure he does! He spent a large part of the ride looking for his animals outside the window. According to Ben, we saw a few horses, multiple bears, a tiger and a few birds. Marc and I only managed to see the horses and birds, but you never know :) Ben was very excited to shake Santa's hand and to sit on his lap. He had talked about it for a few days ahead of time, sort of like he was giving himself a pep talk. It was entirely his idea. We think he had just picked up on the fact that it might be something fun to do since all the kids in the park had been visiting with him.
It was a foggy-misty afternoon, which made the lake extra pretty to us.
He mostly wore his train engineer hat pulled down as far as he could, while still leaving the slightest space to peek out underneath... no matter how many times we pulled it up and tried to distract him, he pulled it back down saying, "No mom! You wear it like this!" Apparently Marc and I already have an uncool fashion sense :) I finally got him to pull it up for one picture.
We had a great time. What a fun little activity in sleepy little Altus Oklahoma!