Friday, July 10, 2009

All right already!

I am so behind on my blogging that I'm embarrassed. Nearly a month has passed since my last post, and while not a ton has happened in that time period, I have a boatload of pictures that need posting. I'm super embarrassed when I read my friend Rachel's blog. She has been posting quite frequently lately. Not totally out of the ordinary for her, except for the fact that she just gave birth to her 4th child like 3 hours ago. I really have no excuse.


We've been to see Thomas the Train at the Tweetsie Railroad and have traveled to Ohio to see family for a week. While I would love to just skip the Thomas pictures - because really, who beside a 2-year-old boy cares about a bright blue train - my neurotic self won't let me jump ahead and post the Ohio pics first. As much as I don't want to admit it, chronology reigns.

So, Thomas it is. The Tweetsie Railroad is in Blowing Rock, NC, right around the Boone area. It takes us a good 2 hours to get there, and if it weren't for sweet face of my son, we wouldn't have even bothered. You pay an arm and a leg for the pleasure of riding carnival rides and going on a 10 minute train trip around the top of the mountain. Really, it's not all that bad, but I'd take Kings Island over it any day (shout out to O-H-I-O!). The draw this particular trip was the fact that Thomas the Train was there for one week only. Ben is a Thomas fanatic; we couldn't miss it.




This was taken just inside the park's entrance. Don't they look like real cowboys/girls/kids?



All smiles on the first ride of the day.



A bit hard to see here, but Ben's smile has now faded, and Claire is slowly getting squashed to the side of the helicopter. We only rode this one once.



Ah, the merry-go-round.



No squashing going on here.




More rides





Feeling the sibling love while in line to ride Thomas.




Yes, Claire is all ready to ride Thomas the ear-splitting whistle train.







The train made a stop half way around the loop for a quick cowboy drama production. Hello stereotypes, this is the 21st century. Nice to meet you.


The crowd ate it up.



Ben's favorite part of the day. Seriously, we should have just stayed home.





Ben's least favorite part of the day. Not that I can blame him. Freaky Sir Topham Hat with the weird blow up head would have made me cry too.





Yes, we are insane enough to take our 2-year-old in the chair lift. Hey, we did it last year when he was just 1. We figure we should win Parent of the Year awards for sure.





Kiddie rides with ineffective steering wheels. Pure kid bliss.








And to top it all off, we added in some good old-fashioned petting zoo/bio hazard fun.






If you know Claire at all, you know this picture is a big deal. Yes, that is a little goat snout sneaking through the fence, and yes, she did actually feed that goat. Big deal for my girl. I was actually cheering her on while she contaminated herself with goat saliva. (sigh) The things we mamas do.







So, I'm going to do my best to update this blog more regularly. Hopefully, it won't be another month before I get back to it. However, I have GOT to figure out a better way to upload these pictures. It takes five thousand years and then they are all out of order, so they have to be moved around. Any of you blog mavens out there know of a better way to do this?


Hmmm.... maybe I'll ask Rachel. :-)


1 comment:

The Stums said...

I was beginning to think your blog had been all together abandoned. So glad you are back.

Much props to Claire for her very big girl-ness. She looked adventurous in several of these photos. And Ben makes me laugh. Dosen has just entered Thomas world, so maybe he and Ben can talk trains before long.

As for photos, I've finally learned that if I upload them first and upload them in reverse chrono order, it goes much better. I just add the text once they're up. Make sense?