Thomas and His Friends

Last Saturday we enjoyed a Day out with Thomas the Train during his visit to Calgary's Heritage Park. Daniel has liked trains for a couple years now.  We got him a train table just after he turned two to try to contain the tracks sprawling across the house.  For the last few moths especially he has been asking if we could go ride on a train, but little did he suspect that his first train ride would be with THE Thomas the train and his best buddy, Nate. 

 The first order of business after we arrived at the park was to go to the train station for our turn.  We had to pre-book the time & date of our ride back in January.  Thankfully, there was no trace left of the rain and snow that had come the weekend before and we had a perfect spring day for our trip.  As we walked from the parking lot to the station the boys sang their repertoire of train songs from Kindermusik & eagerly anticipated seeing Thomas.

I knew that Daniel was going to be over the moon about the day, but for some reason I hadn't expected Sophie's excitement.  She really seemed to love the train ride and the many sites to see.

 After we circled the park three times, our turn was over and we had a chance to pose with Thomas.  Then we waited around to watch him steam off with the next trainload of people.  During this time, the conductor came down to say hi and pose for a picture with his number one fans.

 I have to say, we were really impressed with the friendliness of everyone working at the park.   I think these folks must really love what they do!

 We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Heritage Park, getting a closer look at some of the sites we saw from the train windows, like "Rocky" below.

 It was such a nice day that they even opened some of the amusement park rides.  Daniel loved the boat swings, carousel, and mini-ferris wheel- all first time experiences.

 While Daniel & I were on the carousel for the second time, Thomas came past and Daniel yelled, "Hi Thomas!" and Thomas seemed to reply with a "Toot-toot".  Daniel's eyes were big as he said to me, "Mom, he said hi back to me!  Thomas said, 'Hi Daniel'."  It was so cute!

 Sir Topham Hat was there too, but the line up was very long to visit with him and we were getting hot and tired, so we just waved and continued on our way.

As you can see, we had a fantastic day.  I think this is definitely something we will look forward to doing again next spring!