Polar Express Party

From the time we put the turkey leftovers in the fridge on Thanksgiving up until we open presents on Christmas day I am pretty much a crazy woman. Well, much more than I usually am. Most nights I am up till 3 or later with a few all nighters thrown in there which makes for a pretty tired mama. Like I've said before, this year I have felt a bit less stress because I knew what was coming and my boys are older. My list of things to do for everyone and their mother was still a mile long and I felt like I would have some sort of freak out if more things was put on my internal to-do list. In fact I had to turn down handfuls of request, events and other things because I just couldn't mentally handle more.

So what do I go and do? Something VERY Kendra. I decided to throw a party. I actually like to have something else do think about and plan for, besides my kiddos and jewelry, during the holidays to keep me from going insane. Before the holidays began I made sure to plan for some really fun family Christmas time like lots of holiday movies, drinking hot chocolate, having the boys do christmas cards, doing decorations.....things like that. Among my planning I had thought about taking the boys on the Mount Hood Railroad to do their Polar Express Train. The Polar Express movie is one of the boys absolute favorites. they watched it dozens of times throughout the year...it's just magical I suppose. 

Anyways, we decided against it for a number of reasons. It's crazy expensive, they're younger (I like to hold off on doing those big expensive things until they are a bit older and can remember.), it's more of a once and a lifetime sort of things, and it's kind of far.

What is the next best thing? A Polar Express party of course! Levi was thrilled with the whole idea of it and helped me plan it. It wasn't complicated and pretty easy to put together. We kept the party small and ended up inviting a number of kids who Levi loves to play with either in his CTR class or kindergarten class but have yet to invite over. I printed off some tickets for them to 'check in' with and they wore their pj's.\

While we were waiting for our 'riders' to arrive, we got our crafty on.

Meet Jackson Lyman. He's a fun kid and I love that we always sit behind him and his family in church. He is Levi's age and has a little bro Max's age, the perfect people to sit behind.

And Sr. Charles showing off his coloring skilz.

All the kids, per usual, had to take a look at Jason's fish tank.

And of course we HAD to pull out the trains to get us in the mood.

Lastly Levi and Max helped me pick out a bunch of goodies to have before the movie, when they saw the table and heard that they could have whatever they wanted, lets just say they went a little crazy.

 

This is a terrible phone picture but I was sitting with 3 kids on my lap and trying to keep everything from getting too crazy (me and 9 kids, most of them boys, makes for a mad house!) so that is when quality pictures are thrown out the window.

Oh, and on the way out I let each of the kids fill up a goodie bag for them and to share and included a bell.

Fun was had by all, though I was pretty tired by the end, happy but tired. I am pretty sure we will be making this a regular thing!