A Day out with Thomas the Tank Engine

On Saturday we all went out to the Illinois Railway Museum (http://www.irm.org). They had a special event going, where they had Thomas the Tank Engine there for the kids. It was really a fun day out. We had never been to the railway museum before, so that was fun to go see. They have a whole bunch of old trains and train cars there. They have several old electric "trolly" type cars there that are operating as kind of a transportation system around the museum grounds, and they have several different barns full of train cars.



But of course the highlight of this trip was our ride on Thomas the Tank Engine. Jacob had a real blast! He was so excited to see Thomas running, and to be able to actually ride on his train. The whole ride was really pretty short. They had a train that was about 4 or 5 passenger cars long, and after everybody filed on, we went down the track and out of the museum for about a mile, and then back to the museum grounds. The whole trip was about 20 minutes. But that was great. Jacob really was excited. They had trips going in and out of the museum every half-hour, so there were plenty of chances for the kids to see Thomas running down the track.



We really had fun, and made a day of it. They museum was VERY crowded, there were people everywhere. Our train ride was scheduled for 11:30am, and we arrived a little before 10:30. We looked all around, and took a ride on one of the old electric trains. Then left later in the afternoon.

Owen eats Cereal, the Verdict: No good

So tonight Becky decided that she'd take a shot at giving Owen some cereal for the first time.



As you can see... it didn't go well.. he was fairly unimpressed.

Owen's 5 months old now, so solids are in order... and Owen's been showing lots of interest. Whenever we're eating around him he's always there to try and grab it and put it into his mouth (he even got ahold of a breadstick at dinner last week!). But this cereal was fairly well rejected!

Take me out to the ballgame

So, on Friday evening Software Architects had a baseball game outing for the employees and their families. We went and saw the Kane County Cougars play (they're a minor league team affiliated with the Oakland A's). This was our chance to take Jacob out to see his first baseball game. He was excited by the idea of going to a baseball game after playing T-ball this summer. We all went; Becky had Owen (we drove in separate cars so they could leave when Owen had had it).



Jacob had a blast. He wasn't following the game too well.. but was always very excited whenever the crowd started cheering... Jacob would get right into the act and start cheering along (usually he would cheer the loudest out of everybody!). Also, whenever they'd play any music to get the crowd clapping Jacob would be right there clapping along.

It was so fun to see Jacob there all excited and into the game! He really was having fun and it was neat to see him all excited like that.

We left after the 7th inning stretch (Jacob loved trying to sing along to "Take me out the Ballgame"). It was already after 8pm and Jacob was ready to go...

Let the Blogging begin

Okay, here's the blog... (a "blog" you say? yes... it's short for "web-log" (say it fast!))

So, I thought that it would be fun to set up a blog to be able to quickly throw up some information... So often I'd think to myself: "Hey, I should throw that picture up on a web page".. but when it actually comes down to the task of actually getting some web-space and actually putting together a small site with information (and write to code to make a nice site that I could/would actually update easily with any frequency) I've just never really gotten around to it...

So that's the beauty of this blog.. I'll be able to quickly on the spur of the moment throw up whatever information i find interesting to share at that particular moment...

so... hopefully this will be good.. we'll see how it goes!

PS -- ooh and the cool part is that it's interactive!! You can post your comments here too...! :)