Will's Big Day Out

Will saw an ad in the paper the other day for the Big Day out with Thomas on the Heber Valley Railroad and suddenly he was the world's biggest Thomas fan. He has seen the show on tv a few times and he likes trains in general, but he suddenly decided that he LOVES Thomas the Tank Engine. Sooo we gave in and paid the exorbitant prices for Will to go ride Thomas. Actually we didn't have to pay for Will at all since he is still under 2, but Mom and Day had to pay $20 each for the pleasure of taking him. Even though Mom and Dad felt it was kind of a rip off I think that Will had about as much fun as an almost-2-year-old can have.

We prepared for the excitement by taking some Thomas books out of the library...which Mom is wishing she hadn't done because she has read them each about 50 times and is afraid Will is going to be traumatized when they have to go back to the library.

We spent the morning shopping at the outlets in Park City and Will got a bunch of new clothes thanks to the sales at the Children's Place Outlet. The new baby also benefitted from a few new things to enjoy in addition to Will's hand-me-downs.

Will fell asleep in the car when we drove down to Heber and we woke him up in time to see Thomas pulling back into the station. He was pretty excited when the train got closer and he realized that it was "Thomas!"...he says this in a high-pitched voice that gets even higher on the last syllable. The other activities proved to be on the lame side, but Will still had fun looking at a few animals, playing with a train set (when the bigger kids weren't pushing him out of the way), getting a balloon monkey, and getting temporary tattoos of Harold the Helicopter and Thomas on his arms. He had to sleep with his pajama sleeves rolled up last night so that he could see Thomas and the helicopter...which for some reason he calls "Chuck".

Finally it was time for the big Thomas ride. Will had a pretty serious look on his face the whole time. I think he was having a hard time taking everything in. Thus, the pictures aren't very smiley, but I think he really was having fun because every once in a while he'd laugh and let out a squeal.

After the train ride we drove home and went over to a neighbors for a barbeque and Will had fun playing with the other kids. By the time we got home it was late and I tried to get Will to sleep, but he was way too excited. He wouldn't stop talking about "Thomas--helicopter--monkey--train--conductor--ride." It is funny because he doesn't talk in sentences yet so he just lists off words related to whatever he is thinking about. Thomas combined with the fact that he was wearing new pajamas from the outlets with race cars on them and he had a lot to say! He kept talking for about 45 minutes before finally dozing off . . . only to wake up about an hour later with more to say. Then he woke up about 5 more times during the night talking about Thomas until about 4 a.m. when he woke up screaming for "Milk!!!!" Usually I don't give in to feeding at night, but it occurred to me that with all the excitement he really hadn't eaten much during the day so Dad finally went and got him some milk and then he fell back asleep until 11:30 in the morning. He woke up talking about Thomas and we had to read all of his Thomas books multiple times today and I let him skip his bath because he is so interested in his tattoos and shows them to everyone he sees. So I guess his Big Day Out was a success!

The other pictures are from Will's trip to southern Utah right after my graduation. It just so happened that Bryce's younger sister and her husband and some friends were visiting from London that same weekend so Bryce took Will down to visit family while I stayed up north and visited with my family before they had to go back home to Connecticut. The longest I have ever been away from Will before was 8 hours when I went to an all-day mediation training so 3 days was quite the trip! Will got to ride a pony. The band-aids are because of some nasty mosquito bites he got and kept scratching. In one of the pics Will is clearly hamming it up for someone else's picture.