Daddies, Dinos, and Trains

Daddy finally made it home after a long drawn out three months and counting. His welcome home was a wonderful one, only to be followed by a sad goodbye four days later. In two weeks I will be able to have my husband back home, and my children's father tucking them back in at night.

During our four days together we made the most of what we had. On his first day back, I greeted him at the pier with out children. To be able to have ten min. of complete adult conversation was amazing!

As we pulled into the driveway of our house, all three of the kids saw their father and beamed some of the brightest smiles. Christmas was nothing compared to what showed up for them that morning. Daddy was all they wanted!

During the next two days we enjoyed each other by playing catch with our baseball and gloves, a few games of darts, and some wonderful BBQ and drinks with friends. With such little time I had with him, camera in hand was of no priority.

I did manage to get a couple of photos taken on the last day he was home. We took the kids to the mall to go and see the dinosaur exhibit that they had set up through out the whole bottom level. The kids loved it.

This is the initial view the kids saw as we entered the mall from the second floor.

They were in complete awe the whole ride down. The excitement that Charlotte carried for the Dinosaurs seemed like it was almost too much for her to bear.

As soon as we stepped off that elevator, she made the quickest dash to the nearest dinosaur. I had to quickly grab her and hold her back from crawling through the boundaries. William was a bit more uncertain of these huge moving lizards. Jordan, well he is an eight year old boy.... What do you think? haha

One of their favorite things was the train that went through the mall and around the main exhibit. Can you see Charlotte and Jordan's' hands raised in the back? William was still holding some uncertainty. Charlotte loved it so much that she almost got in a bit of trouble for voicing her opinion to everyone around her when she was told that it was time to get off the train. Of course she thought that we were completely insane to tell her that she needed to get off, and the operators of the train were also at the top of her "let me tell you what I think of that" list as well.

She seemed to calm a bit down once we told her that we were going to go and "pet" a dinosaur.

Charlotte was all about the touching of a Dino's, William on the other hand, well lets just say that his uncertainty grew into a "I think not". He wanted nothing hands on to do with those over sized scary creatures. He purposely kept a nice distance from those huge teeth that looked like they could eat him.

After William refused to go anywhere near daddy while he stood by one of those Dino's, daddy came to him.

I wish you could see in this photo how tightly William is clutching on to his fathers shirt. He was scared out of his little mind. It even got worse when daddy tried to put him in the dino's mouth!

As traumatizing as the experience was for William, the rest of us had a great time. That night William and Charlotte would not stop talking about the train. "Mom, I love trains" Charlotte would say. "I love trains toooooo" William would come back with. So the next morning, Once Chase was out to sea again, we set up the trains.

William was all about the trains.

Maybe next time they will have a train exhibit that we can go to all for my sweet William.