The Christmas Express

Tonight, after Andrew read the boys their bedtime stories and right before tucking them into bed, he opened a little envelope and presented each of the boys with a special round-trip ticket.

These babies took 5 minutes to make.

They were so excited even though they had no idea what it meant. We had planned a surprise outing to take them out to see the Christmas lights.

The boys ran around their room in excitement still a little clueless as to what was going on, so I told them to go downstairs and put their shoes on. Go downstairs and put on shoes? With PJs on? Go outside with PJs on? It was all so foreign to them. This made the night all the more enchanting.

When Nathan got downstairs and found out there was also hot chocolate and popcorn involved in the surprise. He was over the moon and declared it was the best day ever!

Caleb joined him in cheering and sipping hot chocolate which I had poured into a couple of Caleb's sippy cups because those were the only lidded cups we had.

With tickets in hand, the boys piled into the car.

Andrew punched their tickets and with that, The Christmas Express departed for our first destination.

The first house was not too far from us. They were the First Place Residential West and Best Lighting Display winners. As we turned the corner, Nathan recognized this as one of the houses we visited last year.

I distinctly remember taking a photo of Nathan last year, standing alone in front of the huge display of Christmas toys.

There were too many people around this year to recreate the scene and the boys were still so full of beans I didn't bother to try.

The second house we visited won Second Place Residential West and Best Synchronized Music and Lights Display. Even as we were driving past, looking for a parking spot (because it was packed!) we saw lots of people gathered to enjoy the show and I was itching to jump out of the car to join them.

I was absolutely speechless as I stood there watching. This was like something you'd see at Disney or some other amusement park. It was a huge production and I can't even imagine the amount of work that went into orchestrating such a beautiful display.

The boys were really pooped by the end of the night, but we all had a lot of fun and I'm so glad we got to do this. Maybe it'll become a Christmas tradition for us. At least next year, hopefully I'll have more than 10 minutes to prepare for it!