Anyway, there were hundreds of little kids there to see Thomas and ride on the train as well as participate in a scavenger hunt, play in bouncy castles, climb inside emergency and construction vehicles and watch magic shows. Our boys loved the whole experience. Benjamin was mesmerized by "Choo-Choo Tain!"
We got to watch Thomas coming down the tracks before boarding the train.
The boys loved watching the scenery and were pretty convinced that we had been magically transported to the island of Sodor because they readily identified several landmarks.
Even more exciting than the scenery, were the luggage racks. All four boys independently asked me why the train had monkey bars. Despite telling them the true purpose of those metal bars, we had to pull multiple children down off of them.
Yes, Benjamin, there really is a Mr. Conductor. All the boys liked getting their ticket stamped.
After the ride, we had a photo "opportunity" with Thomas. Opportunity means people took our picture and wanted to charge us a lot of money for them. We took our own opportunity to take some free pictures. You can't see Thomas's face, but there is no mistaking the blue engine with the number 1 on the side.
The railroad association set up some really cool model trains.
It was really too bad the day was chilly because Tobias didn't get to show off his thematic train duds. You can see his cute onesie in this pic, but it wouldn't be Tobias without a little spit-up as well.
I didn't take pictures of most of the other activities. We had our hands full trying to keep track of our five amidst the sea of small people, but the boys were absolutely crazy about the magician. The magic tricks were not fantastic, but he played well to a young audience, pretending not to notice silly things happening in his act. He reminded me of the Washington Post piece by Gene Weingarten about the Great Zucchini. If you've never read it, you can check it out here. Anyway, the most memorable part of the magic show for me, was when the magician's magic wand "accidentally" grew and went right up his nose. The boys howled with laughter and the magician said, "You all may think that's funny, but it's snot." I admit, I laughed.
Here is the last picture of the day. As I mentioned, there were emergency and construction vehicles that the kids could sit in. Most kids went in one at a time, but if one of our boys was going in, they decided they were all going in. That poor backhoe never knew what hit it. They thoroughly explored the inside and outside before we were able to round them all back up and pry their hands off of the shiny piece of manly machinery. My apologies to the kids who were waiting for their turn. We did our best.
An odd way to spend an anniversary? Maybe, but it wasn't entirely inappropriate. After all, there was magic.
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