Yesterday was National Train Day. I bet you didn’t know that. I didn’t. Yet somehow, thousands of people did, including my wonderful wife who thought it would be a great excursion for the three of us to take since Ethan likes playing with trains, and singing about trains, and talking about trains… Well, you get the idea. So off we went… and below are a few moments we captured along the way.
To avoid the CF that would have been parking, we decided to add to the “train” fun and take the metro to Union Station. While on the train, Ethan thought he saw Santa Claus… which ended up being some 22 year old kid who had not shaved in 3 weeks.
Of course, once we got there, we realized that the line was this long…
Fortunately, they were handing out little bags of goodies, which included this sticker…
And they had nifty hats!
Of course, after waiting in line for 45 minutes to see the trains that were on display, you actually ended up getting into yet ANOTHER line as you filed through the 10 car long Acela train that we had waited around to tour. As Lauren put it, “it was like waiting to get off an airplane, but 10 train cars long.”
So, after shuffling alone for about 20 minutes, Lauren and E decided to take a break on one of the seats.
So, after one train, we decided to bail as we could not see ourselves shuffling through THREE more trains. Not to mention there are only so many times you feel like chasing your toddler into one of the train bathrooms or pulling him down from one of the chairs.
Fortunately, there WAS something Ethan was interested in… multiple powered trains!
And if fighting hoards of people at Union Station wasn’t enough fun, we topped off the day by celebrating Dillon’s two year birthday with all of his buddies. The theme of the party was sports (keep in mind his dad is a Michigan grad – booo…).
First up, a little hoops action. Bear with me on this one. Prior to me videoing this he had shot three straight baskets in almost perfect fashion and as it goes, I had to wait a solid 80 seconds to finally catch it on tape.
And after showing off his prowess on the courts, Ethan felt the need to display his fine kicking skills. I only caught about 12 seconds of it, but multiply this by about 20 minutes and you’ll get a sense of what everyone else witnessed…
He then got a little bored with the whole “ball” thing and decided to search for “Daddy” under all of the cones, which then all of the surrounding kids decided to mimic. My son is a leader.
And as all parents know, you have to give the visiting birthday participants a gift bag, and this party was no exception. The little gift was a bag of sports treats and a flexible visor with sports stickers. In under 10 minutes (the drive home) the stickers made it from the hat onto his arm. Shocker, I know.
And not surprisingly, after SUCH an exciting day, he was not quite ready for the day to end…
You’d think after all of this excitement he would have passed out – no… tossed and turned for 2 hours and finally fell asleep around 9. Our son… We love him to death.
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