Looking for a mall Santa alternative?

November 27, 2012 By Erika Zane

27 Nov

Sunday we took the Santa train! Did I mention this is my favorite time of year?

I had no desire to do the usual mall Santa deal surrounded by screaming kids, likely followed by tears of our own. I wanted a Santa picture, but found the options disconcerting. Thankfully, my dad (Poppie) and Dylan have a shared love of trains, which is how we found our alternative.

We all live in Central New Jersey not far from a town called Flemington in Hunterdon County. In the beautiful, historical, downtown area of Flemington, along with some awesome outlet shopping and a kids consignment shop I love, is the Black River and Western restored historical train line.

I rode this train a couple of times when I was little, so I was extra excited to share this experience with my kids.

Hmmm, how to best describe our experience… I’d have to go with one word: joyful. Complete, unadulterated, pure JOY.

Here are some pictures of our experience and SANTA!

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Comments

melanie jean juneau (motherofnine9) says

November 27, 2012 at 12:13 pm

beautiful photos as always and thoughtful, loving ideas, words and actions

Hello and welcome. It’s been a while. For Lent this year I decided to fast from the thing that took too much of my attention from what is truly important: Social Media. Though there are countless amazing benefits to Social Media, after about a month offline so far, there are seemingly just as many negatives. I never realized how much of my brain had been hijacked by it. I’ve had so many revelations about how much easier it is to move forward when I’m not constantly reminded of the past. But I still want to record my family as they grow at this ridiculous speed and, I’m realizing, so many of our family’s memories are here. Those along with so many of the struggles and stages we’ve worked through. Maybe in the midst of COVID19 isolation and my kids around me so often, I’m brought back to a time when they were too young for school and with me so often. Writing here during that time helped make up for the limited adult conversation in my days and the overwhelm provided by my… little treasures 😉 My husband, fur babies, three fiesty kids, and I hereby extend an invitation to visit this little sneak peak into our life. We’re super flawed and broken and there aren’t too many dull moments around here. And I promise it’s not always as magical as some of my golden hour, sun-soaked images would suggest. There’s usually too much coffee in my system and we welcome all the prayers. Come on over if you want to process with me.