Being that the majority of our kids love Thomas the Tank Engine, we jumped at the chance to get to up to Duluth again to see him. For those of you who are not familiar with this sassy little train, you can learn all about him at his website.
The car ride down was much more enjoyable than the last time. I sat with Marosa so she wouldn't fuss. She didn't seem to thrilled, but at least she wasn't crying.
We stayed at the same Holiday Inn Hotel. We love their kid-suites! It has two rooms, one with a king size bed and TV for the parents, and another with bunk beds and a TV and VCR for the kids. The kid room is also painted really cool. Each room has it's own bathroom, too. Here is a view of the kids' room from our balcony overlooking the pool:
We arrived there rather late, but the kids still wanted to go swimming. So Lee, being the nice father, happy put on the swimming suits and took the gang swimming, while Rosa and I watched from our room. Annora was so excited!
The next morning, we went down to the Depot to ride Thomas. The boys loved meeting Sir Topham Hatt, the director of the railway.
They all got tattoos of characters on the show. Corbin got a Harold the Helicopter one.
Then we heard a familiar "peep peep" and Caleb was bursting with anticipation... Thomas was coming!
We posed for a couple pictures, then it was time to board.
We got a neat little cabin room all to ourselves. The kids has fun watching out the windows.
Alex enjoys holding Marosa, and she never seems to mind.
We have to get a picture of the famous bridge in:
The kids even spotted a big cargo ship out in the Lake.
All too soon, though, our ride was done. We said good-bye to Thomas and headed for the zoo. The kids wanted to see if they could play ball with the polar bear again. Sadly, though, he was sleeping.
But we ended up having a blast anyway. Alex found his favorite animal in statue form.
Annora is really into the animals. Sometimes, too much so. She found a peacefully resting flock of geese... and, well, lets just say they stopped resting real quick!
Luckily, the llama was more than willing to be petted, so we finally got Annora away from the hissing geese and to the llama.
There were some very interesting animal combinations in some of the zoo pens. Here are some porcupines and a peacock sharing a lunch:
And a seagull in the prairie dogs pen:
And a strange looking bird hanging out with the geese:
After the zoo we had to get home. It was time to get packing for our big move coming up! But that's another event...
