Scout the Elf has really been busy. He pulled out all the stops last weekend for the December 4th Polar Express Day!

We started the day with train pancakes. These came in a set of pancake molds from Williams Sonoma that we were given as a hostess gift years ago.  We tried unsuccessfully to use them a few times and have finally mastered them. Two tips: 1) thoroughly cover the molds in cooking spray before each pancake and 2) the Williams Sonoma pancake pen is a must for filling the shape!

After breakfast, we snuggled the kids in sleeping bags to watch The Polar Express.  Our “elf” thriftily recorded it from ABC Family the night before.

After the movie, which was totally, surprisingly good, we gave each boy a copy of the book.  We have a tradition of giving them a keepsake book for each Christmas and birthday and I had already bought these, wrapped them and had them under the tree.  But, we thought it was appropriate to pull them out early since they loved the movie so much.

Along with the books, we gave them each a golden (white in our case) ticket to ride on a REAL Polar Express Train!  That afternoon we drove to Blue Ridge Georgia for the boys first real train ride to Santa’s Village. They served hot chocolate and gave each child their own bell to ring… just like in the book!

It was a truly memorable day!

And for those tracking along with Scout’s daily treat, December 5th was a dinner play date and December 6th was Gingerbread Day – Scout pulled out a cute Gingerbread House lift-the-flap book from last year’s Target dollar bin and left all of the fixings to decorate gingerbread men.  Cookie’s men didn’t stand a chance of being all dolled up… he totally enjoyed eating his m&ms and raisins as fast as he could.