Kids' Day, The Colorado Railroad Museum, and Our Day Out with Thomas

Every year around this time, we pick a day and designate it to be kids' day. We try to pick things to do that we think our kids will especially love. Recently, Oliver has been all about Thomas the Train, so we got him tickets to "A Day Out with Thomas." We took them for Kids' Day this past Saturday. I didn't want to get him too excited ahead of time because it is really hard for little kids to wait. So, we carefully worked him up to it by saying things like, "I've heard Thomas might be coming into town from Sodor." The day before we went, we asked him, "Would you like to see Thomas?" He stared off in the distance and broke out in a big smile. "Yes, I do!" he exclaimed. That settled that!

When I'd called the museum to get tickets, the man who helped me let me know that there would be a lot of activities for kids. He also told me it's really busy and to get there at least an hour before our train departure time. Our tickets were for 1pm, so we needed to be there by noon. We arrived a little before 11am, and I am so glad we did! The place was packed. I had no idea it would be the event it was. There were large signs directing us to "Thomas the Train Parking." We had to drive about two miles past the museum to park, and then we caught the shuttle they provided back to the museum. As we drove past the museum, we saw Thomas. You have no idea how pumped Oliver got from seeing Thomas. Well, maybe you do.

We parked our car and took the shuttle over to the museum. It was the first bright, hot, and sunny day in a few weeks. I had no idea the event was all outside! Andrew laughed at me when I said that, but it's true. We didn't come prepared and didn't have hats or sunscreen. We spent a lot of the time trying to keep the kids shaded and cool. It was absolutely worth it, though. One of the first things we did was stand in line for photos with Thomas. We got to see Thomas drive around the park a few times (he did 3 loops for the riders). 

After Thomas stopped, we go to go stand and have our photo taken. They sold the photos for $18, but they also let us take our own. I snapped one of the family super quick. I didn't want to hold up the long line behind us, and, consequently, I ended up with a single, blurry photo. Oh, well!

Even Joanna got into the Thomas spirit! She kept yelling, "Thomas!" all day. A few times, she walked up to kids who were wearing Thomas the Train shirts and pointed at them and yelled, "THOMAS!" at them. It was kind of funny.

In the library at the museum, a woman read stories about Thomas.

There was a big tent full of train sets for the kids to play with. Our kids loved this tent, and we sat in there for probably a full half hour.

We got to go into an old train car, where they were giving out temporary tattoos.

Sir Topham Hatt was there, too! The line to see Sir Topham Hatt was a few blocks long. We didn't wait in line, and I just snapped a photo of him from the distance.

Rather than wait in line in the sun to get a spot on one of the front cars, we waited in the shade to get a shady car at the back of the train. The wait wasn't too bad, and the kids did great!

Here's our view of the museum as we went around on the train:

There's Thomas, pulling our train!

We were all exhausted after our day out with Thomas. The kids were amazing, though, and never got fussy or cranky the entire time. We really felt like we'd just spent the day at Disney World or something!

Everyone was too wiped out to do much after that. I ran to the store and picked up ingredients to cook with Oliver. We made smoothies and a pizza. After we ate, he helped me bake pumpkin bread for the first day of fall! In all, I think it was pretty much the best day he could have hoped for, and Jo had a good time, too.