A Surprise Day Out With Jackson And Thomas!

The first weekend in November, Dave and I planned to take the boys to A Day Out With Thomas so we threw them in the car, picked up my mom, and headed out to the Railroad Museum in Perris.  We didn't tell Jack where we were going, and he was very excited that there was going to be a surprise.  Of course, the first thing he asked when I told him it was a surprise was "Is it a train?!"  so it didn't surprise me at all when he started freaking out and tugging at his harness yelling "Stop the car, mom!  Stop the car!  It's a train!  Stop the car!  This is my surprise!" the moment that he saw the signs for the museum... and that was before  he saw the actual train, and way before he saw that Thomas was there!  I found a parking spot and grabbed Jack's engineer hat that I had stashed in my bag without him looking, and we headed to the entrance to get tickets.  While we were in line, guess who chugged right by?!  Jack was sooo excited when he saw that there was a train coming... and he got very still and quiet when he saw that it was Thomas!  He was so filled with awe that he didn't know what to do!

Our tickets to ride Thomas weren't until a bit later, so we set out to explore the museum first!  Sam didn't really care about the trains, but he had a good time anyway... it was kind of hard not to, as Jack's excitement was contagious!  Jack had a great time in the little Jack-sized train and trolley cars, but he definitely loved checking out the real trains with daddy even more!  And more still, he loved watching the cable cars go by!  He couldn't wait until it was our turn to actually get to ride the rails! 

After we had been walking for a little bit we came to our first opportunity to actually go for a train ride!  We came across the Caboose Train: a train made out of a bunch of cabooses attached to each other!  I didn't get any photos of the outside of the Caboose Train, but I did get a few on the inside.  Dave and Sam explored the seat up in the crow's nest, and then we found a seat to ride.  Jack was so excited and we couldn't take our eyes off of him the entire ride! 

And then... it was our turn to ride Thomas!  Thomas' track was just a straight track.  Thomas led the train one way, and the engine on the back of the train led it back.

After we rode Thomas's train, we found a barn that had a bunch of trolley-style train cars and buses!  Jack had a lot of fun playing on those!

Jack spent some time chugging up and down the track (I think he was a freight train in these pictures)...

... and then he spent a lot of time checking out the different railroad crossing signs!

Then we rode one of the trolley cars that were going up and down the street

Then Jack got a Thomas tattoo!  He was very excited about it!

At that point we were done.  Before we could leave, though, we had to say goodbye to Thomas!  We made our way over to an open train car that was on a track adjacent to Thomas' track to wait for Thomas to pass by, and when he came by we waved and yelled "Goodbye, Thomas!" and "Thanks for the ride, Thomas!"  It was a great way to end the Day Out With Thomas!

It was a great end to a great day!  And our little Jackson-Train chugged all the way back to the car ;)