Cooper's Birthday

Last Friday the boys skipped school and we left around lunch time to go to Chattanooga. We took Cooper on a train ride to the North Pole. Thankfully traffic wasn't bad. We stopped at a McDonald's and let the kids run around for little bit and get a snack. After that we met Zac's parents and Gavin and Amy at the train station. Mom and Greg had followed us from Manchester. We got our tickets and boarded the train. When the train started moving, it had gotten a little darker so we were able to see some Christmas lights. The staff came through and passed out ginger bread cookies and milk. They read stories and sang songs which was all good and tolerable until we were almost to that "magical tunnel" they kept hyping up. Before we hit the tunnel the train came to a stop. They tried telling us some "caribou" were blocking the way. When the adults finally asked what the deal was, they said a tree was down on the tracks and they were trying to move it. Could they move the tree? NOPE. First time this has ever happened in the trains history and we are all on it with 4 kids! After about 20 minutes there, the train started backing up. We drove backwards so that someone could somehow (who knows where) find a chain saw. After finding a chain saw the train moves forward again. We arrive back at the tree and park. By this point Cooper needs to potty. He and Zac went outside on the steps of the train but Cooper would not go. So I took Cooper a few train cars up where there was a working bathroom. After that the staff was in full on damage control/ entertainment mode. They sang more songs and tone deaf Bobby came out with his harmonica. It was much like a child learning to play the recorder....basically the same note over and over but to the beat of a Christmas song that you can't quite figure out what it is.  The kids were actually doing ok though. And by ok....I mean turning the chairs into slides, jumping over seats, bouncing and jumping up and down in the seats, but in Quinn's words, having the time of their lives. Hank on the other hand was complaining and telling us this is the worst train ride in the history of train rides and that pulling out his teeth would be more fun than this train ride. They gave up on singing and asked kids to come up and tell jokes. Hank went up and told his darth gator joke (the only one he knows). We were just proud that he got on the microphone and didn't chicken out. After this, the tree was cut up and we were back on track to go through the magical tunnel (at warp speed hopefully to make up for time, but nope again) and onto the north pole. The north pole was nice, lots of Christmas lights and things to look at and of course, Santa! Santa boarded the train and Zac and I  would have bet a lot that Santa was our friend Tadd considering he was the most southern sounding backwoods Alabama thing you've ever heard. It was quite funny. The kids loved Santa and told him everything they wanted for Christmas. Cooper pushed Santa off the chair because he was invading his space (again....Alabama) and then told Santa to bring him Igor, a Halloween decoration. Santa made his way through and Mrs Claus came through to say hi as well. She was what Quinn wanted to see the most. He had been asking about her and got to take his picture with her. Then the train conductor came through and punched tickets and handed out jingle bells. Hank saw those the second we got on the train and proceeded to ask me every 3 minutes when we would get the bells. When we got the beloved bells, we got to hear them the whole way back to the train station. We got off our train more than an hour later than planned. Of course that put us having dinner late and our parents getting home late. Considering we had 4 little kids with us, they did very well. IT was quite the adventure but we laughed a lot and it really was fun, all sarcasm aside! We spent the night at Gavin and Amy's that night and got up the next morning and just let the kids play for a while. They had so much fun together.

 No, Cooper doesn't eat cake, and yes, I bought an entire cake just so he could blow candles out. And he loved blowing his candles out. It's times like this that I see how he really loves to do all the birthday things that a typical child would do even if he doesn't like to eat it.