Day out with Thomas

On Saturday we drove up to the railroad museum in Golden, CO for a "Day out with Thomas". We bought our tickets months ago and had been looking forward to this special day ever since. Every time we would see commercials for it on PBS, Rylan would shout, "That's what we are going to see!" Unfortunately we all got colds this week and Charlton and I were feeling the worst by the end of the week. Also, the weather was not great with temps in the 50's and drizzling off and on. Not a great combination, but we had been waiting too long to miss this big day. Rylan had a few temper tantrums about having to sit while we were taking our train ride; and by the time the ride was over, he was in full blown tears. We tried distracting him with looking at the model train display outside, but he cried more because he couldn't actually play with the display trains. We even bought him a plastic Thomas whistle, which also created more tears because "the wheels don't work," and he couldn't figure out how to make the whistle blow. (Never fear, he finally learned how to blow the whistle and demonstrated this new skill constantly for the last 20 minutes of the ride home. I think we won the medal for "dumb parents" today!) I was definitely feeling that parental frustration of planning a fun outing for your child, spending a good chunk of change, getting up early to spend an hour on the road, just to be rewarded with tears and bad attitudes! I was really afraid the whole day was going to be one big disappointment for everyone.
Finally, we were able to push the reset button on Rylan's mood with a snack, some juice, and a rest on the bench. We met Sir Topham Hatt, toured the museum, and managed to get a quick picture with Thomas, before calling it a day. The best part for me was that the kids stayed awake the whole ride home (thanks to Rylan's ear-splitting whistle blowing) so we could all take naps. Oh, and on the way back to our car, Rylan said, "That was fun, getting to see Thomas."
I am actually at work right now, so I will have to wait until later to post pictures...