A Day Out With Thomas (2.0)

You might remember that last year, we made a special trip to Baltimore to see Thomas, that cheeky yet beloved tank engine, when he rolled through town.  It was such a hit, and their love, especially Malcolm's, for all things Thomas has only grown since last year, so the day tickets went on sale this year, we bought them.  

While it's usually a battle to get these two dressed and ready in the morning, reminding them that we were going to see Thomas had them flying into their (matching!) clothes and ready to run out the door.  

We made it to Baltimore about an hour before our ride, which was perfect because it gave us time to check out the train displays, ride the carousel and train ride, play on the playground, and get our temporary tattoos - Thomas for Malcolm and Rosie for Lucinda of course - before our train boarded.

Then, it was "all aboard" for our special ride on Thomas!

They were pretty excited about the conductor who punched their tickets.

And the special certificates they got from Sir Topham Hatt declaring them Junior Engineers

But mostly, Malcolm & Lucinda were super excited to be riding with Thomas!

The other highlight, perhaps unsurprisingly, was the gift shop.

We promised them they could each pick out one new train.  Malcolm talked all week about how he wanted Diesel 10 (who is a pretty mean train who appears as the bad buy in a Thomas movie called Day of the Diesels that he's currently obsessed with.... my children's bizarre and misplaced affection for the "bad guy" in various movies is a story for another time).  This is happy Malcolm upon finding Diesel 10 at the gift shop.

Lucinda didn't really seem to have a preference going in, and hemmed and hawed a bit, but ultimately was pretty delighted to find Luke, the little green train from the Thomas movie Blue Mountain Mystery.  It's not worth explaining his place in the Sodor mythology, so let's leave it as Luke's a cute little misunderstood narrow gauge train that Thomas befriends although, because he's Thomas, he screws up everything before ultimately saving the day for everyone.  She's pretty happy to add Luke to her arsenal.