Monticello Railway Museum

Today Ben got to ride his first real train! There is a railway museum about 30 minutes southwest of us in Monticello and it has weekend rides on steam engines. When we told Ben that we had very special surprise for him today, he said 'go shopping? buy new train?'. However, when we explained that he would be riding a real train, he was super excited! When we first got there, he had a blast walking up and down the platform, looking at the trains parked there, pointing out the train tracks, climbing into the mail car, and of course playing on the Thomas train table in the ticket office. When the train arrived, Ben could not wait to get on. He kept saying 'go in! go inside!' and he actually got a little frantic when we wanted to see the front of the train before going inside to find our seats. Once inside, however, he situated himself next to the open window and declared that he was going to 'sit on knees...look out window'. He proceeded to stay on his knees, hanging his head out the window the whole trip to downtown Monticello and back. He was so excited to start moving - telling people outside 'all aboard!' and his eyes lit up when the conductor said 'all aboard' and the whistle blew. During the trip, we could even see the steam go past our window - he was thrilled! He would wave at people at the crossings or just at anything he wanted (trees, corn fields, etc). At the end he said, 'want more' and was a little sad to leave, but seemed satisfied with us saying that we will come back soon.

Wearing his souvenir t-shirt. He also got an adorable Thomas and Friends plate, bowl, and silverware set from Grandma Z (aka Bama Z) at the museum.

Okay, so this is the best picture we got with our portable digital camera. Our camera is close to dying and we need to buy a new one! We took lots of video with video camera and tried using the picture-taking feature with our video camera, too, but we will have to figure out how to upload that!