All Aboard!

This week was all about Trains at the Claus house! "A day out with Thomas" was coming to Grapevine, TX (just north of Dallas) for the weekend, and we planned to go as a family. Normally Jake works 6 days a week and rarely takes days off, but he just completed his first month of work here, and exceeded his personal sales goals- so we decided it was time to celebrate!

All week we talked about going to see a real Thomas the Train and the boys grew more and more excited each day. When Saturday morning arrived Jack woke up early and wanted to go immediately- but we planned to watch the morning session of conference first, and let Jess take a nap before we left for the afternoon. We told Jack that he had to wait until Jess took a nap- and that resulted in Jack trying to force his little brother into an early slumber all morning! Finally- after waiting (not so patiently) for Jess to take his nap- we left.

We drove the short 15 minutes to Grapevine Mills and became a part of the enormous gathering of families with young children wandering the event. I totally underestimated the amount of people that would be there- and how difficult it would be to actually get to see the main attraction. After paying to get in, we found out that the tickets to get onto Thomas the Train had been sold out since 8:05 that morning. They went on sale at 8:00 that morning. It was suggested to us to come back on Sunday morning at 8:00 to try again. Needless to say- that wasn't happening. So we made the best of it and spent time looking at all of the other booths and shops. There were tracks and trains set up everywhere for the kids to watch, and they had bouncy houses, a gift shop, places to take pictures, a petting zoo etc. It was in the mid 80's and sunny- so I knew they weren't going to last long. Finally we found an "Imagination Station" where it was just tables and tables of Thomas and Friends engines and props. It was a place to just let the kids go wild and play with each other and the trains. It was more like leading starving men to a buffet of bacon. The kids went wild, forgot all their manners, and it was every man for himself! We just stood back and watched how our kids would handle the conflict- and to our surprise, they did remarkably well. Jess had an unfair advantage with every other mom constantly scolding their child to "leave him be- he's just a baby!" YES!!! His small stature had served him well. He just smiled and absconded any and every train he felt like playing with.

We had lots of fun, and after stopping at a few places to take some pictures, we left the craziness and headed home.






It was a good week, and a great weekend! 1 month completed, and 7 more to go.

I couldn't resist taking pictures of the boys as they were standing by the door getting ready to go on Saturday. They are just so darn cute- and growing up so fast!

Jake also snapped a series of pictures of Jack and I, that I absolutely love! What a man he is turning into!