A Day out With Thomas

As I mentioned in my previous post, we took the boys for a ride on Thomas The Train yesterday.  We started on the road around 10am.  Our tickets were for the 3:15 trip, but it's about a 2.5 hour drive, and we wanted to take our time.  We took the scenic route through the mountains, which is always worth the extra time.  Both boys got a little sleep on the way, and we made one pit stop at a ranger station.  At one point, LW started repeating "Thomas? Where are you?" over and over.  Really cute, if you can imagine his two year old voice.  Lunch was interesting - LW ate like it was his last meal, JT had about two bites.  Maybe he was just too excited and nervous.  When we got to the station, it was obvious parking was going to be a difficult task.  But we finally discovered a poorly signed lot, that landed us right behind the station!  Thomas was there when we arrived, but soon left on a trip, which led JT to have a pretty good meltdown.  It seemed like no matter what we said, he was convinced that we had missed our turn to ride!  Eventually he did calm down, and we made our potty stops, picked up our tickets, and checked out some of the activities.  Then Thomas came back.  JT and LW were beyond excited.  Can you tell?

Once they calmed down a bit, we meandered our way over to Thomas and boarded.  LW went right up the stairs and chose the first seat he came to.  Have I mentioned how excited they were?  We had about 10 minutes until the train left, so there was a lot of "sit down" and "keep your hands and head inside" being said.  But eventually it was time.  Thomas' whistle sounded, and the old train started moving (and squeaking and creaking).  Unfortunately, the seats LW chose were not on the scenic side - we had a lovely view of several backyards, trailer parks, parking lots and dumpsters.  But the train was not overly crowded so it was easy enough to look out the window on the other side and see the beautiful mountains (and ominous dark clouds).  But I don't think the boys cared what they saw, as they seemed enthralled by all of it.

 

It's only about a 25 minute ride, and it goes by quickly when you're wrapped up in your children's excitement.  As we pulled back into the station, those dark clouds opened up and it started to rain.  It wasn't too bad, so we had time to dash over to the "Imagination Station" tent without getting drenched.  This tent was full of hands on activities for the kids, a train table, a lego table, arts and crafts, face painting and temporary tattoos. They boys occupied themselves for quite some time.  The train table was the HOT spot...a line of little boys and girls, all with their hand on a train, going around the table.  There were also a couple of bouncy houses, and JT had fun on one of those.  I saw something about a huge old tortoise roaming around, but we didn't see him.

Eventually it was time to go.  The activities were coming to an end, and the thunder was rumbling.  JT asked if he could say good night to Thomas, so we headed back to see him.  There was a bench for picture taking, and they both were happy to do so.  Even though they had official photographers, they also allowed you to take your own pictures (thankfully...the cheapest package was $16 for two 5x7's!).

You can see how happy our two little boys still were!  JT keeps asking when we'll go back.  We decided to start heading home before stopping for dinner.  On the ride home , when LW wasn't nodding off, he'd all of sudden start asking about Thomas, much to the chagrin of his older brother.  We had a bit of a difficult time finding an appropriate spot for dinner - there weren't many to choose from off the highway that were appropriate (i.e. we were hot and sweaty and had two tired kids so no five star restaurants for us), plus we hadn't figure out the points of interest feature on our GPS yet, so we ended up not stopping until we were about a half hour from home!  However, we now know to choose "on route" instead of "near current location" when searching for a place to eat.  And we also need to turn the volume up so we'll hear when it tells us the exit is coming up.  Live and learn!

We didn't get home until just past nine (we had issues at dinnertime despite a certain 4 year olds promises that he would eat a good supper - that he chose), so the boys didn't get to bed until about 10PM - WAYYYY past their bed time.  Silly me had hopes that this would be the time they actually slept a little later in the morning to make up for the late bedtime.  Instead, they were up bright and early as usual. So back to the grind it was for us today.  But we had a really good day, and I'm so glad I chose to spend my birthday the way we did.  I'd do it again in a heart beat!