The boys and I came back from Seattle today on the train! I love the train (brings back memories of playing in Europe in younger days) and was excited, and very nervous, to take a train trip with them. Scott had originally planned on staying in Seattle for a while, but as it turned out he didn't need to so he shadowed us down the freeway, which made me less nervous about corralling both of the boys. His periodic texts read, "Waiting in the parking lot at Centralia." "Need me to stop in PDX?" Yes, I was comforted by the fact that I could toss one out to Daddy if they started to act up! But it wasn't necessary - not even close.
They had a ball; we explored every inch of the train we could access in the first 30 minutes. Literally. This is the over-sized baggage area:
Their top two favorite places were the dining car, which had large wrapping windows and seats positioned to take away the "who is going to sit by the window" argument, and the arcade room, which Mommy refused to fund, but had a lot of open space and few people (so that whole noise thing that comes up a lot with us was less of an issue). They even befriended another little boy on the train, which made things a lot easier on me! The second picture here is putting road stickers on the windows - then they drove hot wheels cars on them for a while.
Half-way through we took a movie break, which Carson was all about. Nolan seemed to know he would fall asleep if he sat still though, so he spent the time staffing a gate he made across the aisle with his headphone cord and opening it whenever someone walked through.
Great trip overall - thanks for the memories boys! :)