Thomas the Tank Engine

Our little Colin-man has definitely jumped on the Thomas band wagon.  He likes his choo-choos and knows them all by name.  It's really cute to watch him play at his train table, since he's starting to make the trains talk to each other.

With just a little bit of research, I discovered that Thomas was actually coming to a train station near us this summer.  Awesome!  The girls had both been to see Thomas before, but they were pretty young.  Needless to say, all three kiddos were pretty excited to see the famous train.
 

It's Sir Topham Hatt!

I think it blew Colin's mind a little when he saw Thomas -- in REAL life!  All through the train ride, Colin kept informing us that we were on Clarabel.  For all you Thomas-newbies out there, Clarabel is one of the passenger cars that Thomas pulls.

Colin is feeling shy around Thomas

Happy to be riding on Clarabel

Then we hopped on a different train - this one was a diesel; Thomas is a steamy - and took a slightly longer ride to an old gem mine. This train's passenger cars were the double-decker type. They looked awfully familiar to Phil and me. When we asked the conductor about them we discovered that they used to be passenger cars in Chicago. No wonder they looked familiar - they were just like the ones we rode on the North Shore line.

At the mine we got to pan for real gems!  Everybody had fun finding their gemstones and then trying to identify them, and we even got to take home our new jewels.  Definitely a fun time.