new friends and another big day

I have to admit to really not liking Thomas and his friends, that moody old Fat Controller and the repetitive nature of the stories which almost always start with an engine blowing his or her own trumpet, screwing up the delivery of whatever to wherever, being told off by the Fat Controller and then being put to rights by another engine.  Boring!

But Ollie (and I suppose Max too, although he's not nearly as vocal about it yet) loves Thomas, almost as much as he loves the Octonauts, and he can spend ages playing with his train set, linking up the trains and their cargo, pushing them through the tunnel and around the bend and up the hill.  He'll often ask for help putting his train tracks together (and his pa is the master of that game) and even little Max loves to plonk trains down at the top of the hill and watch them fly down the track.  It's so sweet to watch them play together, especially since it doesn't always end up with them bickering over who gets to play with which trains.

On Saturday we discovered that the postponed-because-of-the-floods Day Out with Thomas event at the Workshops Rail Museum in Ipswich was on for just a couple more days, and so today we decided to take the boys out to meet Thomas, his friends and The Fat Controller.  It was a total success, Ollie was such a good little boy, he loved clambering up into the trains, sitting in the driving seat, checking out the most awesome model railway (very cool), queuing to see Thomas, listening to the (slightly creepy) Fat Controller telling stories about Annie and Clarabel and toddling around, taking in the scenery, the history (maybe) and the awesomeness of the giant engines.  He really seems to be in his element at this kind of thing (lots to see and do) and not just because it was Thomas themed.  We didn't do much learning about the history of Queensland's rail, but there'll be time for that (and I get so excited about the places we haven't visited yet).

So, at the end of another long weekend, as we look through the hundreds of photos of the three days gone by, it feels like we did loads and kept on top of things and managed to have a weekend that was enjoyable and exhausting.  Again.