Holiday Express

We started December and all the joyous festivities for Christmas off by attending the Holiday Express hosted by the MWR on base. It was a lot of fun (okay I'll admit it - it was better than I was expecting). A lot of organizations from the community pulled together to make a sort of North Pole village you could wander through, enjoying various activities at each building. So you could go to the North Pole Optometrist, sponsored by the Lion's Club and they would help you decorate and put together some paper glasses. The North Pole Library, hosted by the library on base, had a bunch of pillows and blankets on the ground where you could sit while listening to Christmas stories. This was at the 'Salon' which was really nice for two reasons 1) they had good lighting set up so we could actually see what we were doing (coloring pages - which has nothing to do with a salon but what are you going to do?) and 2) they had furniture set up so I could take a minute and sit on a nice couch. Okay the really fun thing about this particular stop was that Liberty loved the lights. She found the lights absolutely enchanting and spent more time staring at them than just about anything else she did that evening. (I can't blame her - Christmas lights are one of my favorite things about the season - there is something simply magical about each little bit of light along the string.)

One of the groups sponsoring a building was this boy scout troop - these boys were hilarious. They were really into helping each kid that came through. One of the things that was so great about this whole event was seeing how many people, youth especially, really got into the spirit of the thing and put a lot of time and effort into making it a magical evening.

Here we have the girls as snowmen - which was a huge hit. Emmuska talked about this for a few days after the event. Something about being a six foot snowman really tickled her fancy.

Meanwhile this was the highlight of my evening. The post office went all out to make this stop awesome.

They handed each child a paper that had 'Dear Santa' on the top after which they could write their letter to Santa. It's hard for me to believe that Emmuska is already old enough to really be into this sort of stuff but she is. She understood the point of it and asked me how to spell what she wanted to ask Santa for (princess games, a teddy bear and of course a pig). After she had written her letter they had big mailboxes the kids could put the letter into and somebody was there to give them a toy. I objected to this valuable piece of history being stuck in a faux mailbox to be lost forever but Emmuska insisted otherwise it wouldn't make it to Santa. You see my dilemma. I managed to snag an extra letter from the postal workers/elves and plan on making this an at home activity. With any luck she won't grill me too much as to why she is writing Santa again - as she already did it once...

This was the reindeer stable. One of the first things Emmuska noticed upon our arrival that a couple of people were wearing reindeer antlers - something she pointed out to me and asked why. Of course I didn't have an adequate answer so she asked this lady. I don't know if she got her answer or not but from what I could hear they had a pretty good discussion about reindeer and how the lighted lawn ornaments they were passing off as reindeer were not real - but it was okay if we were just pretending. (When asked which reindeer was her favorite rather than launching into this discussion Liberty just picked one out and pointed at it...)

Just another example of somebody really getting into the spirit of the thing. This was in Santa's workshop which is ironically watched over by...

The Grinch! Yeah we didn't actually visit Santa at this festival but we did get a chance to snap a photo with the Grinch. The funny thing was that Liberty had checked out the 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' movie (not so much from a desire to get into a festive mood as she just picks out and puts back shows until you say it's time to go and then she gets whatever is still in her hands at that moment) a few days before so the girls and I had watched it and Emmuska had been talking to me about it a lot the days leading up to this visit. This led to more discussion as to whether we met the Grinch who liked Christmas (consensus was that he did indeed since he was in Santa's Workshop) and how he hadn't before because his heart was too small, his head wasn't on right and his shoes were too tight. (That's right nothing gets by this kid.) It was a pretty exciting meeting that happened at just the right time. Got to love that!

All in all it was a wonderful adventure. We had a great time and it really did get us in the spirit of the season - ready and excited for all things Christmas-y!