All Aboard!

We had a busy but fun weekend! It started out WINDY, rainy, cloudy, dreary and cold. But, that didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves. Friday night we saw RENT, as I mentioned before. Saturday morning we took it easy and played with the boys. That afternoon, I went to Suz's parents' house to meet little Ian, who turned one month old the following day. It was great catching up with my friend. :) Her little guy was adorable. He made the best noises and slept most of the time I was there. It definitely gave me the baby itch... but I also know that Suz is getting very little sleep these days and I remember all the difficulties of the first couple months. Some days I think I may want to have that part of life done forever. But then other days I think just one more... I stayed for about an hour and a half before saying goodbye and telling Ian he'll have to come over for a play-date sometime soon. :)

That night, it was pouring. So, we stayed in and played, watched TV and tried to get the boys to bed early since we were losing an hour of sleep that night with daylight savings time. But, I'll trade an hour of sleep for more sunshine throughout the day!

Sunday morning we went to church as a family. Then we came home and put the boys down for an early nap so that we could tour some open museums that afternoon. My mom had emailed that three local museums were opening their doors to the public for free that afternoon to celebrate some anniversary in PA. I forwarded the email to friends in case anyone would be interested in taking their kids, too. :) We ended up having to wake Joshua to leave, and he was a little touchy that afternoon, but I think he had fun.

We started at the Railroad Museum, which was bumping! Joshua's memory is too good - he remembered being on the Strasburg Railroad across the street and said he was ready to go for a ride on the train. Daddy found rock star parking as someone was leaving right as we were coming in. Yeah!!!! We finally convinced Joshua that he wasn't going for a ride but we were going to look at trains in the museum. The first stop was this little train exhibit.

Next we went into the big rooms of "big & strong" trains. The entire museum was pretty impressive, I thought. I wasn't expecting it to be so big! We didn't even go upstairs. We looked at the trains and then wandered to the back where the boys got on a freight car and then onto a coach.

We also ran into a lot of people we knew there: the Dehart family & Grube family from life group were there together, Ted Zeiset (one of my old youth leaders) was there, the Eby family (friends of my sister) were there, and a family from our old church that we recognized. The place was really busy, but thankfully it was also really big so it wasn't shoulder-to-shoulder in any place but the play room.

Caleb Luke doesn't like to walk holding hands. He desperately wants to be down, but he doesn't enjoy being constricted by hand-holding. Joshua doesn't mind being held or holding hands; they are so different!

I think Joshua's favorite part was the little motorized moving trains. He could have stayed there for a long time.

Shawn pointed out that this train had just retired. I asked him how he knew and he said that 40 years from the date on the train - whatever! He knows far too much trivial information. :) :) :) :) Too bad we couldn't get him on Jeopardy or Who Wants to be a Millionaire or something like that.

The boys were enjoying looking at all the trains, big and small.

When the boys got on the coach to sit in a seat, Joshua all but jumped into Daddy's lap and said he was scared to go on the moving train... ??? This was the same boy that wanted to go for a ride earlier! We explained that these trains were inside so they weren't going anywhere!

Then Shawn & Caleb climbed up into a train to see where the conductor sits. Joshua didn't want to go until Daddy was already there, so I ended up climbing up with him. Thank God I had exchanged my high heels for my sneakers before we left!!!

When we went into the one room, Caleb proclaimed "NEAT!" The guy laughed; this was the first time I had heard Caleb use this expression and it made me laugh. Silly boys!

Here's the playroom with all the toy trains. It was SO crowded. Joshua got to use the controller one time. While Caleb was content to just watch, Joshua was becoming cranky. So, we quickly made our exit and left.

We decided since it had gone okay to check out the Landis Valley Museum since it was open, free and close to our house. I never realized how big this place was!!! They said the museum is on about 60 acres and there are 40 more beyond that. This was a really old village. The kids (and truly us adults) could have cared less about a bunch of old buildings. Joshua begged to go on the free wagon ride, so we climbed aboard.

The horses, Bonnie & Duke, drove our family all around on the muddy streets. We were the only ones on that particular ride - even though the place was decently busy, the timing worked out perfectly that we got on and no one was in line then. :)

The woman kept asking Joshua questions like if he got dirty like the horses and Caleb kept interrupting with his answers. We cracked up. The kids really enjoyed the ride.

The last stop before going home (it was still rainy and there was mud EVERYWHERE!) was a barn with old farm equipment in it. Joshua said he was going to scare the tractors like on the Cars movie - he thinks 'tractor tipping' is funny.

We came home just before 5 pm and the phone rang. It was our friends the Cintron family from life group wanting to know if wanted to join them out for dinner at the Wingery, a place that the hubbies had talked about wanting to try. We said sure; it's nice to be called by friends. :) The kids did okay, but not great. We probably did too much in one day, truly. The service was also really slow, I thought, so the kids food came right out in the beginning like we had asked but she took a long time to come back for our order (in fact, I think it was even after the kids were eating that we got to place our order) so the kids were really restless til the end of the night. It was still nice to go out with friends, though. I forgot to take any pictures while we were there eating, so I got one as we were heading to the parking lot.

Thus ended our busy weekend!