For Evan's 2nd birthday, instead of having a party we decided to go away for the weekend. James and I had been wanting to check out Mendocino and neighboring town Fort Bragg for a while now, which is famous for their Skunk Train. Given how much Evan likes trains we thought it would be a prefect way to celebrate his birthday.
The train ride itself took up most of Saturday. Evan was a bit scared of the steam engine at first since it could get quite loud, but quickly got used to it once we boarded the train. Highlight of the trip for him was probably going through a tunnel (it was almost completely pitch black). The entire train ride was 4 hrs total, with on stop in the middle for lunch break. It's a pretty long time for a 2 year old to sit still, so a few times we let him walk around a bit himself. He loved dashing between the carts, including jumping over the connectors that actually move as the train's moving. The more I say "dangerous", the more he seems to get a kick out of it. On the whole train there's one car that's open. That's the most popular car since it was a pretty nice day. Any chance Evan got he would run towards that car. I guess that's his favorite as well, probably because they had railing in the middle of the car that is the perfect height for him to use as monkey bars.
After the train ride we stop by the beach for a bit. Both boys enjoyed walking up and down the sand dunes. After an early dinner of pizza and ice-cream, we headed back to the Holiday Inn Express to go for a swim. James intentionally picked that hotel for the pool. Evan has been obsessed about going swimming ever since he got a taste of it a few weeks ago at James' company picnic. So this time his wish was granted. His notion of swimming is to climb in the pool, sit on the steps (near the entrance), splash around a couple of times, get out, and repeat. This particular pool had a hot tub next to it. So Evan was even busier running between the two pools and trying to decide which one to go into next. James and I had to each guard one to make sure he doesn't get in too deep.
Overall a great trip for the whole family, and I think Evan enjoyed it :) We stuck to the train theme for his birthday presents as well. He got many Thomas train track accessories to go with the basic set we have. His favorite is the mine shaft that Nana gave him. It's great because it's both a tunnel and a slide! He loves his train tracks and can plays with so much now we don't bother putting them away anymore.
On a side note, one valuable lesson we learned is never leave a freshly baked cake in the baking pan over night. It ends up impossible to take out. We had wanted to make Evan a "train" cake and thought we were smart by baking the cake the night before, only to find out the next day that there's no way that cake is coming out of the pan whole. So we ending up frosting it in the pan (sort of like a pie). Sorry Evan... next year we'll have a proper cake!
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