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!

Look Mom, No Hands!

Sophie has been cruising around the house using one hand to hold onto furniture or us for months, but this past week she finally let go and started walking across rooms instead of around the edges.   I think that trying to catch her helium birthday balloon from last week's party might have been the key motivation. She is VERY proud of herself!

Happy 1st Birthday, Sophie!

What a difference a year makes! It is hard to wrap my head around all the growth that has happened from Sophie's birth to now. I feel like all I can do is just try to appreciates the moments as they happen and try to take some pictures to help me remember them later.

We had a pretty quiet day here for Sophie's first birthday. Last week we had a few friends & relatives over for cake and a visit, but today it was just our little family.

This afternoon we headed over to one of our beautiful city parks to play. Sophie loves the swings right now. After she had swung for quite awhile I pulled her out to go walking around other parts of the playground, but after a couple minutes she grabbed my hand and walked me right back to the swings. I guess she knows what she likes!

Daniel also loves the park & swinging, but his favourite is what we've been calling the "belly swing" since he likes to lay on his stomach & pretend he is flying.

Sophie has been working on cutting four top teeth this week (yes, all at once, isn't that delightful?) so I thought she might appreciate some ribs to gnaw on for supper. They seemed to be a hit!

Sophie also started walking about a week ago. She has been cruising around the furniture with one hand holding on for months, but last Sunday she finally decided to go "hands free" and has been picking up speed ever since. I have managed to get a few videos of it, but for some reason can't upload them to this site today.

Danny boy

Lately Daniel has been wanting to take pictures with the camera or saying, "Hey, you should take a picture of me and..." or, "I want to take a picture of..." The upside is we've been taking a lot of pictures lately, the downside is that I don't really want to hand over my camera to a three year old. I think I will have to get him some sort of toddler friendly one or a disposable one so I can "hire" him as the photographer for Sophie's birthday. Daniel & Eyeyore

Daniel & Keith having fun at the last Kindermusik class of the semester

Swinging at the park. Daniel was grumpy because all the big kid swings were taken, but he still wanted to swing.

Daniel & the cats