Swimming and a Day out with Thomas

My sister and I like to do a kid-swap every so often and watch each others kids and give each other a break. Last weekend was one of those swaps. I took her kids on Friday, and gave her the "day off", and Jer took off work early and we took the kids to our neighborhood pool. The kids had a blast - we ended up staying there for like 5 hours. Tons 'o fun! :-) I seriously think those kids could live in the pool.....throw em a hot dog or a slice of pizza every now and then, and their good to go! :-) (never mind their bathroom issues....eeek!)

Anywho, here's Jer with the 4 kids....

And little Miss Gena.....her first outing at our public pool. She snoozed thru the whole thing :-)

And on Saturday, we wake up to cloudy skies. (and if you are from this area, you know it has been cloudy and rainy here like, nearly everyday it seems like. You'd think this was April again!!! However, it was NOT raining when we woke up.....

So we racked our brains of something to do. Well my sister in law had told us about this "Day Out with Thomas" that was coming to an area close to us. And best of all - it was free admission - which was a MUST when we were bringing along 2 extra kiddos! So we loaded up our 3 in our van, along with my 2 nephews and went to check out "A Day out with Thomas".

Only about 10 minutes after we left our house, the heavens let loose and it started raining.....like torrential downpour kind of rain. Needless to say, we continued on our trek, in hopes that where we were going it would not be raining or it would quit soon. We stopped at a Taco Bell for lunch about 5 minutes from the park, where the Thomas stuff was at, and it was still raining, extremely hard!

So my husband, the always-thinking genius, decided to stop at a gas station, and buy a thing of trash bags (you know, the small box for like $7....?), and cut holes in them to use as ponchos. We had driven an hour thru the rain, packed everything and was ready, we were gonna do this - rain or .....flood!

Unfortunately, the whole Thomas thing was outdoors, which would be great if the weather cooperated. However, most stuff was under tents in the grass.....which made a HUGE muddy mess, EVERYWHERE! It was awful. We got there in the rain, with trash bags over us, tromping thru the mud in the tents, and the kids were all obsessing over their messy shoes and feet, none of them could of cared a lick about any of the train tables set up in the tent. We all just stood there looking at each other - it was quite humerous now, looking back at it.

Matthew eventually started playing with some of the trains on the train tables set up. None of the other kids ever did. They weren't too impressed....

We finally made our way over to another tent, where a magician was putting on a magic show. So that got the kids' attention.....

Finally.....the rain stopped and the sun came out - much to all of ours relief. So we ditched the trash bag ponchos, and went on our way.......

The kids ended up seeing a magic show 3 different times, they liked it so much, here they are, laughing at the hilarious magician...

Before we left, we got their picture with Sir Topham Hat....

And of course, we can't leave without a pic of Thomas! (we skipped out however on the train ride - too expensive!)

And the wonderful camera picture-man was kind enough to hold out his hand with a card just as Jer took this photo.....

And here they are leaving....

In the end, the kids had a good day, once it quit raining and the sun came out! :-)