Christmas Train

John is out-of-town tonight, so I get to set the family agenda for the evening.

While reading the paper, I see that Canadian Pacific’s Christmas Train will be in St. Paul for an hour this evening. Since I only have laundry to do, Christmas cards to write, a shopping run to Target, and floors to mop, this sounds like a fine adventure.

I tell the girls after supper that we are going to Target. We do what we do at Target, and then I tell the girls I have a surprise. Of course, Sarah tries to guess, but I refuse to tell. Problem: Train doesn’t arrive until 7:10 pm or so. It’s 6:00 pm. So I kill time by stopping at Barnes and Noble to pick up Christmas presents, Starbucks for a latte for me and milk for the girls, and then I take a big S_L_O_W drive to downtown.

No train yet. Since I know the train route very well (all those trips from St. Paul to Chicago via Amtrak), I start driving down along the route to meet the train. Well, I meet it — about 5 blocks from the last stop — 10 miles away. So I turn around and follow the train back to St. Paul. Yes, I know. Waste of gas. But, not really. Entertainment isn’t cheap in any form…

The girls are still clueless. I tell them to watch for something interesting out of the car windows. We are almost to downtown St. Paul when we catch up with the train and Sarah figures it out. So we, along with the rest of the City of St. Paul, are driving along Warner Road, periodically pulling over and taking pictures of the train.

Rachel is the first one to spot Santa in the caboose, waving. At one point, the train stops just before preparing to enter the heart of downtown. Of course, the kids encourage me to pull up along side the caboose on the other side of the railbed and behind some trees, roll down the windows, and yell “Hi Santa!”

I’m sorry my pictures of the train are blurry, but I was dealing with very low light levels, a moving train, shooting through my windshield WHILE my kids are jumping up and down in their car seats. But, I kind of like the pictures. The lights were cool.

The kids now are trying to convince me to go where the train has now parked, so they can see Santa. Sarah is especially adamant. Yes, the same girl who has screamed and cried everytime she’s seen Santa since she came home from China 6 years ago.

So I cave. I find a place to park, and we walk up to the train, and hunt down Santa. Sarah is so excited, she can barely stand it.

We find Santa, and finally get through the crowd so the girls can get a candy cane from him. Santa looked remarkably like Al Franken in gold wire-rim glasses. I have to wonder if this is a cousin … because Al is out of the country.

The girls are just absolutely thrilled. No tears, just excitement and 50 thousand questions from Sarah about every detail of Santa’s trip here. Good thing I took storytelling in Speech back in high school… that and creative writing. My nose should be as long as Pinoccio’s right now.

Just before we took off for home, I lined the girls up for a photograph by the caboose. Just like every other parent/child combination that had stopped by. But it is a cute photo, even if Rachel is looking very tired.

So that was our excitement today. Too bad John had to miss it. But I’m sure he’ll hear all about it many, many times over.