Our Thanksgiving Surprise

This year we did an out-of-the-ordinary Thanksgiving with our kids, and boy was it fun!
Last week started off with me playing the mean Mommy and making the kids skip school lessons and having to deep clean the house instead. They moaned, they belly-ached, and I kept at them. When all was clean in the house we went up north to visit Grandma and Grandpa - that was a happy thought for them. But when time came for us to leave around 9, out came the "why can't we stay longer" singers. Little did they know we weren't headed home! Instead of heading back south, we went even more north into Salt Lake...to catch a midnight train to California!






Our original plan was to take a train trip at Christmas time out to Cali to visit family out there, but we upped the date without telling the kids a few months ago and then kept it a secret from them! And the family we were visiting kept it a secret from their kids as well, so we got to walk right into their house and surprise cousins the right way!

The train ride there was lots of fun. The seats were comfy for sleeping in. Lots of leg room and a fairly decent amount of recling capability. And there was an observation car that we spent a great deal of time in during the daylight hours looking out at the scenery flying by. There was even someone from the Train Museum in California riding with us who came on the intercom every so often with tidbits of info about the places we were passing by/through.

While we were in Cali, we enjoyed some of the best weather. I packed all long sleeves for everyone, but all short sleeves would have been much more appropriate. The kids really wanted to go swimming in their cousin's pool, but the weather wasn't that warm. Garrett especially wanted to go, so we let him! He borrowed his cousin's swim trunks and jumped in, despite his cousins warning him of how cold the water was (they ahd already learned this lesson earlier in the fall season!) But Garrett didn't want to heed their warning giggles, so in he went. He jumped in the deep end and promptly wished he hadn't! By the time he got out his skin was so cold and he was shivering so badly that he got a nose bleed and had to go inside to a very long warm bath!



We played outside in the cul-de-sac almost every day. Had a sit-in-movie projected on a neighbor's garage door with the whole neighborhood, complete with a popcorn machine, hot chocolate, and a fire pit to keep us warm. We visited the Calavera Big Trees. Made homemade kites from celophane and sticks. Went bike riding and did bike stunts on dirt hills. Owen rode a two wheeler for the first time ever. All in all, we had fun playing with cousins all day long.

My sister-in-law and I had decided that we didn't want to spend all day in the kitchen cooking for Thanksgiving and then all night in the kitchen cleaning up from Thanksgiving, so we went out to eat turkey dinner at a local cafe instead! Now, I'm not a turkey lover, but the dinner was pretty good considering it was turkey! And the not cleaning up afterwards part made it taste all the yummier!

The only day we had any weather issues (as fate would have it) was the day we drove 2 hours up to see the big trees. We ran into rain on the way up there, and then a third of the way through the 1.5 mile hike through the forest it started snowing! Big, fluffy, cold-to-the-bone flakes. So I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked, but the trees were amazing! The oldest one there dates back to 600AD. And the trees were these massive skyscrapers that took your breath away. The redwoods were so weird in that they are the same diameter around almost all the way to their tops. It was wonderful! There is a great warming lodge at the end of the trail and they serve free hot chocolate and apple cider when you are done hiking. So after we pretty much jogged the rest of the way out of the forest, we settled in there to sit by the fire and warm up while we ate the picnic we had packed. You can even see some of the snowflakes in the picture!













On our trip back home we tried another first when we upgraded our seats partway through our trip home up to a sleeper compartment. It worked out great for us because during the daylight portion of our ride we sat in either our coach seats or up in the observation lounge and then as soon as we made a stop in Reno as night fell someone got out and freed up a family sleeper for us. I wish I had taken a picture of us in it, but the camera bag was packed up on the way home so I didn't take a single picture from that trip. Having the room meant that we also got to eat in the diner car which we loved. Scott and I had yummy steaks, Tig had shrimp scampi, and the boys had kid meals. Then we all had a dessert off the dessert cart as well! After dinner it was back to our room to catch a few hours of sleep before our train came into the station at 3:30 in the morning. Sleeping there was so much better than sleeping in the coach seats on the way up! Much less stress ~ not having to worry if someone is pilaging through your bags while you sleep, or worrying that your kids are on a different row than you. And SO much more comfy! They give you actual size pillows in the sleeper cars as opposed to the airline pillows you get in coach. If you are going a long way by train, that is the way to do it!

It was a great week, but somehow it seemed to fly right by. The kids have thanked us nearly a hundred times for the fun we had, so I think some solid family memories were created for them! It wasn't the traditional Thanksgiving, but it was a great one all the same!