It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

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What a festive day we had today!

The kids have a homemade advent calendar, sometimes it's chocolate, sometimes it's a joke, sometimes it's a little present. They were pretty excited today though - it said 'We are going on the Santa train!' And so we did!

Off to Aviemore, where the snow was lying deep and crisp and even. First stop the Cairngorm reindeer herd, and as completely flukey luck would have it, the big man himself was there feeding lichen to his reindeer and he needed some little helpers. Some very cute baby reindeer calves there too, but not the A team. Apparently Rudolph was up on the hill, getting in some training (visions of Rocky style running up and down steps with a towel round his neck...)

While J and I threw snowballs for a very friendly and enthusiastic collie, Daddy said to G 'do you wanna build a snowman?' and she said YES! (This turned out to be the highlight of the day for her!)

From there to the Strathspey Steam Railway, for the Santa Express. A very jolly Santa rang his bell to summon everyone on board and J was thrilled when "The Fat Controller" clipped our tickets ("Look, the Fat Controller! He is VERY fat, isn't he?" "Yes, but this isn't a Day out with Thomas, this nice man is just the ticket inspector." Awkward.)

Off we steamed. Mulled wine, mince pies, photo ops, and finally Santa himself came ho-ho-hoing in to the carriage, accompanied by about 12 elves carrying sacks of presents. "Hello young man, what's your name?... ...and how old are you?" "5!" And one by one the elves called down the line 'Boy, 5!' 'Boy, 5!', 'Boy, 5!' until the elf carrying presents for 5 year old boys cottoned on, dug deep and produced the prize, which worked its way back up the line to Santa, who was being just delightful and charming all of us with promises of Christmas Eve.

'Boy, 5' and 'Girl, 3' were both thrilled with their gifts - a domino run and a Doc McStuffin toy respectively. By the time we arrived back in Aviemore, all the Christmas lights were on, but you could still see the snow glowing on the mountains and dusted on the trees on the hillside. Pretty special. Really, we couldn't have made this up!

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