I Spent the Day Out with Thomas ... and Thomas Spent the Day Out with Me!

Ahhhh, the things we do for our chilldren. My daughter is quite the Thomas the Tank Engine fan. She loves watching the show, but it is on right before naptime so I PVR it for her to watch later. I must say that she is not as big as a fan as our friend's son. He knows the name of every train, all of there parts and what they do. When our friends told us that Thomas would be at a train station in Minneapolis we decided to take a small family vacation and join them. We drove for 7 hours to get to Minneapolis and then another 40 minutes to get to the train station. But in the end it was all worth it to see how excited they got when they saw Thomas in real life.

The Day Out with Thomas festival was really well ran. They had lots of neat activities for the kids and lots of volunteers to help run them. They also had a gift shop set up with every Thomas item imaginable. We picked out a T-shirt, a wodden Thomas train and a Thomas whitsle (we definatley regreted the whistle purchase, along with every other parent aboard the train). Thomas was equipte with 3 passanger cars to take ticket holders for a 25 minute ride. I was told by our friend's son Collin, that there names were Annie and Clairabelle. Too Cute!! The weather was quite dreary but it was kind of nice as the crowds were a bit smaller then later in the afternoon when the weather turned nice.

We also decided to take in some of the Minneapolis sites while we were there. We spent one evening at Mall of America shopping and enojying the amusmant park. To our surprise it was Dora's Summer Adventure weekend at the Mall. Rhys was so excited to see Dora and then we even waited in line to meet her. When we finally go to the front of the line Rhys became a little nervous about seeing her so she decided to hand out in Dad's arm and take her in from there. She did get to check out Backpack and Map, which she talked about for the rest of the weekend.

We also found a new attraction to visit. It's called Como Town. It seems to be a hiden gem in Minneapolis, as no on that I talked with had ever heard of the place. It is a Zoo, conservatory, Spalsh Park, and small amusmant park. And it is all free, well they ask that you give a donation of $2.00 per adult and $1.00 per child. That was quite the steal, for a full day of fun. It was a super hot day with temperatures over 40 degrees with the humidity. We did however enjoy all the parts of Como Town especially the splash park. We had remember to bring bathing suits for the kids but had forgot about ourselfs. That didn't stop us we enjoyed the water to in our clothes. It was so hot we dried off before we went back to the hotel.

ENJOY!!