Train on the Brain

I know I said I would update with our Easter pictures but the week after Easter my hard drive crashed. Fortunately,  I had backed up my computer but I'm having some issues migrating those files over so I'm just going to skip ahead and post about our Day Out with Thomas the Train.

William has train on the brain. Most mornings the first word out of his mouth is either truck or train. His favorite movie right now is Polar Express. We pretty much watch it every day.  We were planning on taking this trip later in the year but as I was looking into it, I saw that it was only going to be in Texas during April. So, Friday night we packed up and headed to Grapevine. The trip to Grapevine is a subject for a blog post all in itself. William and I left the house around 4 pm in the middle of a thunder storm to pick Jeremy up at work and we finally pulled into our hotel in Grapevine around 11:30 pm. Eeesh.

So pictures...I mean, that's what you're really here to see, right?

The first thing we was was this Thomas bounce house/slide.

William sliding...

William bouncing...

The front.

We did that for several minutes but I really wanted to see the train.

Here it is. I honestly wasn't expecting much. I think this is super cute and well done. It is not cheesy in any way. It definitely exceeded my expectations.

They have a dude that takes your family's picture with the real Thomas the Train. We took the picture but didn't end up buying it. It was $20 for a mediocre picture of Jeremy and I and a terrible picture of William trying to get out of the picture. Here, William is running down the tracks. You can see Jeremy beckoning William back.  The guy in blue was pretty adamant that William needed to get off the tracks immediately. Yeah, OK buddy. He obviously doesn't know how train obsessed my child is.

Next it was time for our ride. This is the line...we were scheduled for 9:45 a.m., the second ride of the day. I'm glad we went early. The crowd just keep getting bigger and bigger. William did fair waiting to board the train. He only had a couple minor meltdowns. The good thing about an event like this is that everyone else is also with toddlers and so there are no ugly glares when your kid acts like, well, the wicked little sinner they are.

William spent the entire ride pretty much like this.

A family shot a nice co-passenger took for us. William wasn't really into the family pic.

They had lots of other great activities for kids. In one tent they had train tables and trains.

Then in a separate tent there was this really extravagant train set, actually there were several trains going around on several tracks (sorry no picture of that) but William was mesmerized. He watch these trains for at least 20 minutes.

 There was a huge sand box....

There were other fun things that we didn't do like temporary tattoos, a very small train ride, and you could wait in line for a picture with Sir Topham Hatt. William is not into lines or Sir Topam Hatt so we skipped that.


And of course the trip would be incomplete without visiting the gift shop.  We picked out a starter train set for William to take home. We set it up for him when we got home Saturday night. Oh. My. Goodness. He LOVES it! This smile is completely genuine.

He loves his train so much, he even slept with it. When he woke up in the morning what did he say? "Oh, train." Like I said, he has train on the brain.

All Dressed Up And No Bunny To See

I seriously have so much to do this morning the absolute last thing I need to be doing is updating this blog but that stuff is just so much less fun.

So, a couple weeks ago I got William all dressed up in his Easter outfit to go see the Easter bunny. I checked the schedule before leaving the house because its quite a trip for us to this particular mall.

I excitedly walk William to the designated area and guess what, no bunny! His chair and all the Easter decor was there but there was no bunny to be found.

Perhaps he's taking a break or an early lunch I thought to myself. So William and I decided to kill a little time by riding the carousel....

My baby is growing into a little boy right before my eyes.

Mid-ride William decided he wanted to ride a horse. I'm pretty sure moving about is against the rules or at least frowned upon while the ride is moving but I didn't want to have to pay to ride again and I thought him sitting on the horse would be a cute photo pop.

He was really more interested in how the thing worked and a bit trepidatious with the horse going up and down and the ride going around and round.

"Whoa, horsey!"

"Hmmm, how does this work?"

No smiles on this ride.

After the carousel we watched some kids run around like hampers in plastic balls inflated in a pool of water. No photos but I'm sure you've seen these things. They actually look like a lot of fun. Maybe we'll do that next time.

We grabbed some fries and a drink, people watched and then went back to check for the bunny. Again, no bunny.  William was quickly tiring of the mall at this point so we packed up and went back home literally fulfilling the saying of being all dressed up and having no where to go...

I have some fun photos of our Easter weekend but those'll have to wait. The dishes in my sink are screaming to be done. Hope you see you again real soon!

P.S. I'm so glad I did get these photos of William in his Easter outfit because he was not cooperative on Easter morning for the obligatory family shots. But more on that later. :)