Thomas and Friends

Yesterday we took the kids to a Day out with Thomas.  I've been wanting to go to one of these events ever since Theo was a little two-year-old who was obsessed with trains.  Woodrow quickly passed the train stage and was eager to keep up with what his big brother was playing at the time; however, with this move we've got the train table set-up in Maximus' room and we have recently started playing with them more and more.  Maximus is having an explosion of words and so he's really like to play with the trains and choo choos. 

The Day out with Thomas was held at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, ILl; about a 50 minute drive from us.  This is still the closest that this has been held to us in the last 5 years.  We didn't tell the kids much about it and I think they were happily surprised.  It was definitely hot yesterday.  We were all sweating...a lot!  We arrived around 9:50am and had tickets to ride Percy at 10:45 and Thomas at 12:30.  We let the kids check out some of the different displays.  I'd say one of the big hits was an eye level train track and garden displays that the Kenosha Garden Club had set-up.  I think Max could have been entertained most of the day watching the Percy and Toby trains circle around.

The next tent had Thomas the Train (and friends) tattoos, train tables set-up and coloring sheets.  Theo and Max went for the tattoos, but Woodrow was too shy.  All three boys took turns playing at the track, and of course Theo had to stop at the coloring station.  We then moved on to some small motorized trains that the kids could ride on, took some funny photos, and then went for our ride on Percy.  The train ride was 20 minutes through the corn fields.  The kids were equally enjoying the non-city scenery and the train ride. 

After our Percy ride we stopped for some snacks, the kids rode on the small motorized trains again, and we walked through some of the train barns located at the railway museum.  The kids liked to be up close to the big trains...although Theo was definitely tempted to climb on all of them.  We waited in line to take a photo with Sir Topham Hatt and made it right in time for our Thomas ride. 

All in all, I'd say it was a fun event.  The kids enjoyed it and they even got a small Thomas ball for getting all the stamps on their "passport" for the day.  I was glad we ended up having tickets for earlier in the day since it ended up getting more crowded as we were leaving, and we were lucky with very little waits to do anything.