I was not really all-that-excited about visiting the Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum to see the Christmas lights and drink hot chocolate, Friday night, but I WAS excited to be with my grand-girls on an Christmas light outing.
We paid our $4 cover charge and got our Christmas Ornament stickers which gave admission to the wagon train.
As it turned out I had a ball.
It was sort of a low key holiday event. There were lots of lights but no one was pretending they were a big city professional light show.
The assortment of ancient tractors and trucks and cultivators were strung loosely with lights.
There was a hodgepodge of blow-up illuminated characters and lighted bits of decorations that may have been donated from area attics, sheds, basements, and thrift stores.
There were pots of watery not-very-hot chocolate. The kids thought it was delicious!
Three old tractors pulled three specially fitted wagons with sturdy benches for visitors through a winding path.
It was definitely an amateur installation but a laid-back joyful one.
The two- and three-year-olds were thrilled with the ride and with the lights.
Then the tractor halted our wagon in from of Santa's pavilion!
There was a line of families across a grass lawn waiting a turn to climb the stairs to see Santa. Dad's job was to hold our place in line.
Nearby was a table with markers and pans and paper and a giant Santa's mail box. Ruthie and Clem went to work on their hieroglyphic missives to the old man.
Then Sheila and I walked with Brannon and the girls through a footbridge that had been turned into a tunnel of festive lights, and then into a runway for festive toddler scamperings.
I was more interested than the girls in our walk through a long barn full of ancient vehicles and machinery.
Soon it was our turn for Santa.
This Santa needed no cushions and took his volunteer role as a joyful, enthusiastic, mission.
He insisted on individual shots with each child...
...as well and as group shots.
Like a good politician he was in the moment and seemed oblivious to the waiting line during his time with each group. The girls loved him.
And as the little girls left they were instructed to wait at the bottom of the steps for a little present from Santa. Turns out Santa is a woodworker who makes little wooden cars for each child, delivered to them down a tube/ramp by the steps..
The next leg of the wagon train took us to the model train building. Now there are likely more extensive layouts of model trains elsewhere in the nation...
...but I haven't seen them.
Both kids actually got to control one train...
It was hard to pull John and Gamma away from the spectacle.
We were literally the last wagon load back to the now-closed museum visitors center. The walk across the muddy path was the capstone of the evening. Ruthie held hands with Granny and Grandshaw and with appropriate counting and synchronized lifting, bounded through the air -- one, two, threeeeeeeee! -- all the way to the car.
What a wonderful night!
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