North Pole Flyer

The kids have been asking to ride on a train for a few months now. So, back at the beginning of October, I started looking into holiday train rides as I knew there were some somewhere.  I landed upon the Austin Steam Train’s North Pole Flyer! The tickets were sold out online already, so I called their ticketmaster on the outside chance that they might have more available. I was in luck! They had several options and I picked one for the 1st of December, a Saturday. After I purchased the tickets, the man said then realized he hadn’t told me the specifics about our seats. We were in a compartment on a First Class Lounge car, the City of Chicago. When I realized we’d be in our own little compartment with our crazy family, I was thrilled, as that was PERFECT for us! Yay! And, perfect it was. The kids were so surprised when we told them we were going on a train ride. We waited until the day of the ride to tell them. 🙂

We drove down to Cedar Park to board the train. We got in our car about 2pm and it started pulling away at 2:30. We got off of it around 5pm. It was a lot of fun! Santa and Mrs. Claus were on board–got our pic with Santa and he gave a special gift to the kids. A book was read– The North Pole Flyer, of course. And we had hot chocolate, cookies, coloring, soft drinks, water, and of course, the ride was just fun! The kids enjoyed it tremendously! So did Stephen and I! Here are a few pictures from the day.

North Pole Flyer

(click on above link for pictures)

Here are a few that I really like from the day. These were taken in our living room before leaving. (You can click on any of them to enlarge them):

If we were doing a Christmas card this year to send out, this would probably be the picture we’d use. So, pretend this is arriving in a nice envelope in your mailbox in another week or so…  This was on the train–our visit with jolly ole St Nick :

Merry Christmas! 🙂