Stow Aways: Thomas, We Love You!

What's a picture worth? At least a million words in this case. Grace got to meet her beloved "Thomas" yesterday at a festival in Carver, MA called "Day out with Thomas." I guess they do it all over the country and we were lucky enough to have it come to Massachusetts this fall.

Grace's love affair with Thomas started about a year ago when we started going to the Stow library for story time. After story time, we got in the habit of checking out videos (and a few books once in a while.) One of the first videos we checked out was a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD. She instantly fell head over heels for the funny little train characters, their stories, and all of their moving parts. We either checked out or rented a Thomas video every week for a several weeks until Grandpa Lyle actually bought her one. We had been checking them out so that we could take them back but now we owned one that could be watched over and over and over and over and...

I think Mo-Debbie bought Grace her first Thomas train. It is one of the smaller "take-along" trains (I knew nothing about that at the time) and she seemed pretty happy to have just one train named Thomas. Then, came another train named Percy (also one of the small ones.) They were a great pair and Grace loved them. She asked Santa to bring her some track for them for Christmas. Well, Santa and all of his helpers donated a few pieces each of track and buildings and a few other trains (this time of the full wooden size that work on the wooden track.) At Christmas we had Thomas, Percy, Lady, and James. I wish I could name all the ones we have now, but the collection of track and trains we have gathered in

less than a year now takes up an entire corner of our living room and is spilling out of the large bin I bought for them (thinking it would be plenty of room for whatever Grace ended up collecting!) I thought Grace might tire of playing with them, but a year later she loves them more than ever and has plans to ask Santa for more Thomas friends and more buildings and more track. I guess it makes things easy for Santa because he knows just what to get!

So, yesterday, we packed up our car and drove the 1 hour and 20 minutes to Carver, MA to meet Thomas. It was a day-long festival of a few amusement park rides, an expensive hot dog, some long hot lines, several gift shop items (including the Harvey crane train), a few temporary tattoos, and a much awaited train ride pulled by Thomas the Tank Engine himself.

I will never forget the glee and pure joy that exploded from Grace when she first saw Thomas coming around the bend pulling his cars behind him.

She squealed and squeaked and grinned from ear to ear and jumped up and down. She was SO excited. She had been planning this outing for months and had talked about it all day long for at least a week. It was a great moment to see her so happy. It was also hard to have to wait 2 hours until our train time!

We finally got to board one of Thomas' coaches and away we went for a big loop around the park. When we got off, Grace couldn't wait to run up and hug Thomas and tell him thanks for the ride and that he did a good job. Unfortunately, this was also on the minds of the 200 other kids on the train and we ended up in another line. Just before the next departure time, we made it up to the front of the line and got to meet and touch the actual Thomas train. It was a grand moment for her.

I have been trying to think of a time when I was a kid when something was that important and that magical to me. I think Disneyland came close, but I don't think it was quite on the level that Thomas is for Grace. Finally last night, it occurred to me that Grace seeing Thomas was about equivalent to me going to my first (and second) U2 concert. The only difference is that Grace got to meet her Bono! After seeing U2 in concert, I couldn't sleep for days or think about anything else because I was so full of adrenaline from the experience. The same thing has happened to her. She COULD NOT fall asleep last night. When she finally did, she didn't sleep as long as usual and got up very early this morning. Her first words this morning as she woke up were "Daddy, did you dream about Thomas? I had dreams about Thomas and Harvey and..."