Santa's Workshop (Colorado Springs)

On Sunday of our vacation, we headed to Colorado Springs to visit Santa's Workshop and then on to the top of Pike's Peak. (which didn't happen, because it started snowing heavily.)
On the way there, we got out of the car to take a few pictures of the surrounding mountains:

Then we finally reached Santa's Workshop!!

Our first stop was Santa's House. Lily got her picture with Mrs. Claus before we went in.

Once inside, the kids got to take a picture with Santa and talk to him.

He spent a lot of time with them, which was really nice!

After Santa's House, we headed to the rides!

We had an impromtu snowball fight after the kids got off the ride. :0)

The carousel had Santa's reindeer. Lily chose Rudolph.

The boys chose the sleighs.....

While the boys went off to ride rides Lily will not ride, Lily & I went off to ride the kiddie rides.

When we caught back up with the boys, they were riding this Santa & reindeer themed zip-line! The boys loved it!! Here are Zach & Jeff:

While Riley & Jeff waited their turn, Zach talked Lily into getting on this ride:

He told her it didn't go very high at all. ;0)

Yeah......that went pretty high. She was not very happy with her brother after this ride. :0)

Then it was time for Riley & Jeff to ride the zip-line:

Next up was the scrambler!!

I don't think that Zach was a fan of this ride, but Lily, Riley, & I loved it!

Jeff & Zach were the only ones brave enough to ride the ferris wheel:

Waiting in line......it was COLD!!!

Luckily we got to drink hot chocolate and sip hot apple cider while we were there. :0)

Train!!!
The boys insisted sitting clear in the back.....

We saw reindeer!!

Baby reindeer!!

We all went on this ski lift ride. I thought it didn't look too bad......yeah....that thing was SUPER high!!!

We saw that lots of snow was coming, so we told the kids they could do one more ride, then we were going to head back to Colorado Springs. They chose driving their own cars. :0)

The kids were a little disapointed we didn't get to go to the top of Pike's Peak, but it would have been too dangerous. 
So, we headed back to our hotel and let the kids swim. Then Jeff went out into the snow to get us dinner. We watched Malifacent while eating popcorn and watching the snow fall outside. :0)

The Polar Express!!

On Saturday night of our mini vacation, we went to go on the Polar Express!! Lily is obsessed with this story. She loves the book, the music, and especially the movie. She will watch it in July!! So when we saw that they had a Polar Express we could ride, we decided that this was a great idea!

It was at the Colorado Railway Museum in Golden.

We went in and got our Golden Tickets to ride the Polar Express!
(I do recomend you get reservations. We had reservations, but some other people came in and their child was very disappointed because they were completely sold out. :0( )

The first part of our experience (for the green package, which is the middle priced one), we went to a dining car and were treated to hot chocolate served in special mugs that we got to take home with us & cookies! They even danced to the hot chocolate song from the movie!

Then we listened to the story of The Polar Express!

After that, we got out of the dining car and went to wait for the Polar Express to arive!!

I I tired to take pictures of the train arriving and then actors enacting the first part of the story, but it was too dark. :0(

We got on the train and it took off!!

As we were riding, the story played out in front of us with the conductor taking our tickets, the Hobo and boy, and the know-it-all boy from the movie.

Out the windows, we could see the wolves from the movie, then Santa in his sleigh, and the elves from the North Pole in front of the Christmas Tree.

After we watched and listened to Santa give the boy the first gift of Christmas, he came onto the train and gave each of the kids a bell for their first gift of Christmas!!

Zach was not that excited. ;0) But Lily & Riley were super excited!!

As Santa was walking away, Lily grabbed onto him for a hug and I thought for a moment she wasn't going to let go! ;0)

This was a super fun experience for all of us, I'm very glad we did this!