A Visit with Thomas

I am not sure how it happened, but our boys have become huge Thomas fiends! I think I saw an episode was on TV one day so I showed it to them and my parents had a plastic Thomas engine at their house left over from I am not sure what...anyways, the boys fell in love with Thomas pretty fast. We've "collected" about 15 different engines. Did you know there are about 40 engines total?? I did not. I have learned a lot about Thomas the Train Engine over the past few months.

About a month ago we made the trek out to Perris to see the REAL Thomas the Train Engine. Well..maybe just a life size version of Thomas. It was my dad's idea--he had seen some advertisements (be sure to pronounce "advertisements" British when you read this to make it more authentic) for the event and suggested back in September that we go. Basically they have an engine that looks like Thomas and they attach it to some other cars and then they allow people to go on little train rides. The train ride lasts about 20 minutes and the rest of the time you can explore the tents that they have set up with all the Thomas stuff.

We didn't tell the boys until the day of that we were going. They were pretty excited!

We got there a little after 10 which was great because our departure time for the train wasn't until 11am. After we sorted through the whole car mess, we went into the event.

There were hundreds of little boys ages 2-10 running around wearing their Thomas shirts. It was pretty funny.

We went directly to the train and got in line to board.

The boys loved riding on the train!

After the train ride, we stood in line for 30 minutes to have our picture taken next to the Thomas engine. Of course, when we got up there both kids kind of freaked and Matthew burst into tears. Apparently getting that close to Thomas was more than he could handle. :(

After the picture, we went and found some modestly overpriced lunch. It rained off and on the whole day--we were so fortunate that it did not rain during critical times. It started to rain right after lunch and Matthew had a lot of fun with the umbrella.

They had lots of different tents set up. Of course they had a gift shop tent. They had another tent that had a bunch of train tables and craft tables. Kids could play with trains, color trains, and do other stuff. This tent felt like a gaming convention for kids. I was envisioning all of these boys 15 years from now, attending a video game convention or ComiCon.

The intensity and seriousness of all the little boys' faces while they played with the trains cracked me up! I thought it was just my kids, but apparently a lot of little boys have very SERIOUS faces while playing with their trains. 

 

After we checked out the train table tent, we took the boys over to look at some steam engines and some model railroads. They loved checking out the big engines and touching looking at the model railroads. 

While we were checking out the steam trains, we presented the boys with some brand new engines. Rosie for Peter and Skarloey for Matthew. They were very EXCITED to get new engines.

 

Despite the crazy stuff that happened when we arrived, we had a great time! It was so great too that my parents could come along.