We spent Thanksgiving in NM this year. We decided to make the trip there an adventure in itself. We left on a Friday morning and drove to the Giles house in Prove. We love visiting the Giles. The girls look forward to it from the moment we tell them we are going. I even requested my favorite Wendi meal this time. We had Navajo tacos with Wendi's AMAZING fry bread. Best I've ever had. Wendi invited some of our Hawaii (now Provo) friends, the Wilcox family, over for dinner also. After dinner the girls stayed up giggling half the night and we played ticket to ride. The next morning we were treated to more delicious food before we went on our way. We had a bit of a conundrum trying to figure out which way to go. The weather reports were calling for a foot of snow through Colorado. We had been warned and had actually changed our Polar Express tickets in Durango to the following week. We figured we could go that way on the trip home. However, the morning we left Provo the weather report showed similar forecasts on the drive south through Phoenix. We decided if we were going to have bad weather either way we would rather drive the shorter route that led us through Albuquerque where we could see Jenny and her family. The only bad roads we hit were about 45 minutes outside of Moab, and they weren't too terrible. In fact, they were so good that we decided to try to go to Albuquerque through Durango. We were hoping we could change our tickets back to our original plan and go that night. The whole process of changing our Polar Express and hotel tickets back and forth while worrying about bad roads was very stressful, but in the end so worth it! When we changed our tickets the first time we lost our upgrade to seats that faced one another. When we changed them back they said they no longer had the original seats and we could be in the same car but not next to one another. We were really bummed but just decided to stick it out. We already had a hotel room and were pretty sick of changing our plans every five minutes. When the train arrived at the station (which was so exciting) we went to get on our train car and it wasn't lit up like the others. We didn't have any "chefs" greeting us when we got on. One other family of three were the only other people on that car. A minute later a chef came to get us. She said that they hadn't even prepared that car because there wasn't supposed to be anyone on it. She asked if we would come with her one car back. We followed her to another empty car, but this one was lit up and ready to go. It turned out us and the other family had the whole car to ourselves. We had two chefs on our car, all to ourselves. When they read the polar express book there was one book per family so the kids got a close-up of the pictures. We didn't really have the option of singing quietly like we usually do, so we all got into it and had a great time. When we got to the "North Pole" the kids were able to jump from one side of the car to the other to see the lights and look for Santa (and the hobo). I am so happy that we went that night. It worked out perfectly. We were the very first car so we didn't have to wait long to see Santa. He came aboard and Ridge's face lit up brighter than all the Christmas lights at the North Pole. He was so excited about the bell that Santa gave him. He carried it in his coat pocket all through Christmas jingling everywhere he went. After we got off the train we visited the live reindeer that they had at the train station. They had one building with an antique tractor display and all the tractors were decorated for Christmas. They also had a train museum with a Christmas tree display and Santa was waiting there to visit with all the kids. Of course we had to do that! It was a great night. Totally worth the stress it required to get there. Our hotel there in Durango was very nice. We ordered pizza and went for a swim in the hotel pool. It snowed for part of the night but by the time we got on the road the snow had mostly melted and we had an uneventful drive from Durango to Albuquerque. We stayed that night with Jenny and left for Silver City the next day. The ride is so much shorter when you break it up and have something to look forward to every day. We will definitely have to do that again!
Look at that smile!
PS-in the end, besides getting a nearly empty car and free rein of the seats, we got the same hotel for cheaper and they refunded money back because our seats didn't face each other!
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