I have a friend at work whose son is as enamored with firefighters/trucks/stations/etc. as Sawyer is with trains, and for his birthday party, we toured the local fire station. It was a very cool idea, and her son loved it.
I looked into every possible train adventure we could have. I checked into having his party at the train depot, but I was afraid no one would come. (It's a gorgeous historic building but attracts some questionable characters.)
I looked into having everyone ride the train to the party, somewhere a few towns away. But none of the trains return to Greensboro soon enough for that to work, and I didn't think parents would want to have to drive two cars just for the short train ride.
I looked at renting a kiddie train, but quickly decided $500+ was a little TOO special for my budget.
I finally realized I was being ridiculous when I asked Sawyer what he wanted for his party and his one request was a train cake. He didn't care about doing some over-the-top train adventure. Why should I?
So I moved forward with having his party at home and combining Christmas and trains with my very loose theme of "A Trip to the North Pole."
But in all my searching, I did find something that really was the perfect accompaniment to the party: a train ride to have cookies and cocoa with Santa.
The state transportation museum is about an hour south of our house. It is mostly devoted to trains, and though I've thought about it several times, I've never taken Sawyer. I went once years ago, and I was pretty sure that it would be over Sawyer's head and interest level. It has lots of historical exhibits, train memorabilia and the like. It's set in an old train yard, so it does have working trains, a roundhouse and a roundtable (the coolest part when I went).
The special Santa events were held on weekends running up to Christmas, and since my family would already be in town, I invited them all to come. I knew Sawyer and his cousin, Peyton, would probably both like it. I didn't realize my brother would be the most excited about it.
After the birthday party, we packed in cars and drove down to Spencer. It was the perfect distance to give the kids a chance to nap before the train ride.
The parking lot was packed with families and little kids, many in pajamas (a la "The Polar Express"). Ray got in line to get our tickets while my mom and I drove to the Dollar General nearby for an extra layer for me to wear (it was way colder than I'd thought when we were rushing to get out the door).
Why am I the only one who can smile and look normal?
The train finally arrived and we all got on, finally finding enough seats where we could sit together. It was fairly dark for great pictures, but Pops and I served as the group's paparazzi for the evening. A conductor walked through and punched our tickets, and we rode along the short distance to the roundhouse, pointing out lights along the way.
Our seat choices took a few rearrangements to get everyone in the right spot.
One of Santa's elves came through our car to tell us what to look for on the ride.
At the roundhouse, the whole train exited and it was a bit of a madhouse. Inside a large building that houses several cool cars (a WWII hospital train, the private cars of several 1920s millionaires and others), we found several activities for the kids.
They had lukewarm cocoa and sugar cookies. Kids could write a postcard to Santa. Sawyer scribbled on his and ran off with it before I could help sign his name. He found the mailbox and dropped it in.
We played at a few of the normal train exhibits for kids while we waited in line to see Santa.
A display to show how the wheels move around curves on the tracks
Lots of levers to pull
Mr. and Mrs. Claus were both great separately, but looked a little mismatched together.
I think Sawyer was a little nervous at first, but then he launched into his dump truck spiel.
Santa made the mistake of asking if there wasn't anything else he wanted. Sawyer had to think on that one. (At least they let you take your own pictures here and you didn't have pay for one! )
A woman dressed in Christmas apparel was reading (somewhat odd) holiday books.
And there was a Christmas craft of building a foam train engine, something so tedious that my sister-in-law and I had to do them, and we struggled to keep them together because a few parts had to be glued and the glue wasn't dry.
Instead of helping with the craft, Sawyer was itching to get his hands on this model train. We had to pull him back from under the rope several times.
An hour or so after arriving, our return ride to the depot was there, dropping off another load of passengers and picking us up.
The ride back to the station
A little hopped up on sugar
The kids had fun, and we enjoyed the family time. After the train trip, we all stopped at a local barbecue joint for dinner, something we rarely get to do with all nine of us.
Cute place but no match for Hickory Smokehouse BBQ
It made for a long day, but it was a nice cap on a birthday full of choo-choos and Christmas cheer.
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