A Thomas & Friends Weekend

This weekend Thomas the train came to our neck of the woods, so of course we couldn't miss the fun. This was our 3rd time to go see Thomas and friends and we hope to go every year until the girls get too old... We LOVE all things trains and the fun times that we find at the train station. The Thomas people add new little extras to the exhibit each year and that is certainly fine by us. Each time we have been, we find new and different things to entertain us and this year's trip to Calera proved to be even better than the last!
We planned to go last Friday with our playgroup, but it rained, so we rescheduled for this Friday.
We got up early, got ready, and headed out at 9:30AM. Thankfully it wasn't raining, but it was quite a bit chilly out. We picked up a friend that lives in the neighborhood and headed south. There was no traffic and we made it there in record time.
Upon arrival, we met up with several more friends and had the best day ever! When we go to Thomas each year we don't even ride the big Thomas train because it is so expensive, but we do, do TONS of other things for little or no money at all!
Upon arrival, we acquired a map and started on our journey around to all the stations to get it stamped for a fun prize at the end of the day. In the midst of getting our paper stamped, we jumped in the bouncers, got some Thomas tattoos, had fun sliding on the big slide, played at the many train tables, colored and made stamp art, rode the steam train TWICE,(the conductor let us ride again because one of our friends lost her shoe on the first time around) we listened to music, had a picnic lunch, played putt putt, went to story time, got balloon animals from the Thomas clowns, and fed the goats at the petting zoo. Whew...I hope I didn't leave anything out...and wouldn't you know that about 20 minutes before we finished all of these fun activities, the sun came out and the chill left the air. A little too late for us because it was about two o'clock and we needed to head home!
Here is a short video that we took during lunch...if anyone knows the music man's name let me know...we would love to get a CD.

Also, you can click here to see some more fun pics from our day!

After we had pretty much finished all the activities, my camera battery died and so we took that as a sign to head out. We cashed in our stamped paper for a fun prize, loaded up the mini van, and got back on the interstate. This time northbound and we were so thankful that we had already been to Thomas because the traffic coming into town was majorly backed up...we even heard that some of the people heading to Thomas missed their train ride because of all the traffic!
The girls were all worn out and were nice and sleepy upon arrival home. They both took a big ole nap while mommy got some things done around the house.
After the girls woke up from their nap, daddy came home from work and took us out to eat at Jim and Nick's for some yummy dinner! During dinner we told daddy all about our special day out with Thomas and he shared with us some pretty interesting tidbits of his day as well.
The next day, our friends from Ocean Springs came in town to see Thomas too. You see, Thomas doesn't go to every town and they had never "met" him before, so when they heard that he was just a hop, skip, and a huge jump over to Alabama, they couldn't resist checking it out. They even got tickets to ride on the big Thomas the Tank Engine for the ultimate Thomas experience. They had a great time visiting with Thomas, but an even better time visiting with us! ;-)
We decided to go out to Pizza Pro (imagine that!) for dinner and met some other friends there too. We helped our sweet friends' baby girl celebrate her 3rd birthday....the kids had a good time, eating pizza, running around, and they even all got to hit the big gong at departure time! The adults had a nice time as well. We didn't ring the gong, but we did have a chance to have a little bit of grown up conversation!
After dinner, we stopped at the grocery and decided on some Bud Select and Strawberry Arbor Mist...just can't resist the mist...and headed home to have a drink or two!
Our guest pooped out pretty early because of their long adventurous day, but hubby and I stayed up late drinking and talking! :-)
The next morning we all went to Sunday school and church together which was a very special treat! How nice to have our sweet friends with us visiting the house of the Lord...and on such a special day~Palm Sunday! We originally planned to attend the church Resurrection egg hunt and picnic, but it got cancelled this year.

:-( I guess whoever decided that we shouldn't have it had a direct connect with God because it surely was raining cats and dogs all morning and it wouldn't have been a good day for a hunt OR picnic at ALL! Instead, we ate lunch at Habanero's. (shocker, I know.) After lunch, we went back to the house to let the kids play for a few minutes and then our friends had to get on the road back home and hubby had to head to work.
The girls and I snuggled on the couch and fell fast asleep listening to the rain pitter patter on the windowsills. The perfect ending to a great weekend with Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends!