Day Out with Thomas...

So on Saturday we took the kids to a special event at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union. The event was a Day Out with Thomas. Joshy loves trains and Thomas so this was a good event for him.

Quite honestly we have debating going to this event since we heard about it earlier this summer. Joshy typically throws tantrums when things don't go quite his way and quite frankly we weren't sure if we wanted to spend the money only to have a stressful day. So with that said, Joshy woke up Saturday morning in a very good mood and it was a beautiful day out, so we decided to chance it. Only problem, was tickets. After a quick call we found out that there were going to be a limited number of tickets available at the gate (the event usually sells out, at least for the early Thomas Train times).

So we had lunch, got dressed and went. Its amazing how close Union is to us...only 20-25 minutes away. Who knew? lol

Let me say, this event was a toddler heaven. Holy cow were there the toddlers! LOL We got there around 1pm and the earliest we could ride the Thomas train was 4pm. Bummer, we kinda knew Joshy wasn't goign to last -- but we made the reservation anyway and in we went.

First stop, the sand pit!


Our first sighting of the Thomas Train! Joshy and Madelyn both got very excited!


We decided to go for our free tattoos. LOL Madelyn choose Thomas and Joshy chose Harold the helicopter. Then we went over to the shopping tent where they had a fun lego display. of course, perfect photo op!




We did some walking around, and decided to head on over to the actual train museum area. Johsy was quite enthralled with all the trains (you can't tell in the first picture, he was ticked off because a minute earlier Scott wasn't holding him lol). Here are a few pictures as we roamed the area:






After this, we rode a 100 year old street car. Joshy was in heaven. He loved the "ding ding" when the conductor would pull the string at each stop. The rest of us enjoyed it also!


At this point it was getting hot, we were all getting tired and it was still quite a bit until our Thomas the train ride. So we headed over to the other train ride area and rode one of the other trains. Took some fun pictures while on the train ride....





When we got off of our train ride, Joshy had enough. So no Thomas Train ride for us. Really, that is ok. The train ride we did take was identical -- only difference was there wasn't a fake Thomas pulling the train -- which while on the train you would never know anyway. Luckily I did get a good picture of it as a memory of the day.


As you can see by the picture, it was rather crowded which didn't help Joshy's disposition at all. lol The lady on the phone when I called earlier that day to find out about tickets said the Friday is always much less crowded. Next year we will take the day off to take them.

So we headed towards the exit, but not before getting these last pictures. I had to take a picture by the old CTA train.




One more stop in the store to pick up the kids a small momento of the day (I got Joshy a tshirt on clearance, go me!) and we walked back to the car. Joshy was out cold by the time we even left the parking lot! Madelyn keeps talking about seeing Thomas and how she liked it! So that was the excitement for our weekend! Tomorrow its back to the rat race. But that is ok....we have a long weekend coming up for Labor day! woo hoo!