Santa Train, More Gingerbread

Today we made more gingerbread cookies!  I’d picked up some Star Wars gingerbread cookie cutters, so we just had to make some of those, plus some more gingerbread boys (and girls!  how did we forget the girls during the last round?) 😉  Plus, we had the wrong kind of molasses last time around, so they were a little extra tangy and the color was off (Brandon now knows, blackstrap molasses are for vegan health nuts, you gotta have Grandma’s for baking!)  Later this afternoon, we were off to the museum of Life+Science in Durham, but stopped by Steve and Sue’s to drop off some cookies and goodies on the way!  Dad hasn’t been feeling so good since his hospital stay, but we’re all glad that he’s home for Christmas.  I was happy to see him go for a gingerbread cookie straight away!

We made it to the museum with a little time before our train ride, so we looked at some of our favorite things and played with the Keva blocks while we waited.  We went outside and walked to the train area, but it turns out that since this event is an after-hours thing, we should have gone around to the outside entrance!  We got to see a little behind-the-scenes setup and eventually got to where we needed to be.  🙂  By dusk, the staff had transformed the place into a twinkling winter wonderland filled with lights and plenty of fun things to do!  The kids enjoyed their train ride to the “North Pole” and told Santa what they wanted–Kendall asked only for a Bitty Baby book (Santa knew about that one and was prepared!), while Brian surprised everyone by asking for a Clone Wars Lego set, with a complement of particular minifigures.  Yikes!  To the smartphones, to see if that’s even possible.  It turns out that what he wanted couldn’t be done with one set, but could be achieved with two sets.  For just a little more holiday magic, I managed to set things in motion to make that happen in time for the big day before we even got home.  😉  The kids enjoyed getting foam Rudolph noses to wear, and after the train ride, we enjoyed some cocoa and let the kids pretend ice skate!  That was a big hit.  We finished up the evening by playing in the holiday light maze, and checking out all of the Christmas trees the staff had made on the way out.  We went to Elmo’s for dinner, and suffered through a wait to get a table–luckily, it was worth it!!  The kids were fairly good once we were seated, and we even let Brian choose the dessert–a big slice of blueberry pie with ice cream!  Plenty for sharing.  🙂