"My Big One"

Today we went on a train ride.

It wasn't just any train ride.

It was a ride with Thomas the Tank engine.

We also got to play with train sets, ride a "pumpkin vine" train, eat hot dogs, listen to folk music and train stories, see a fire engine, meet Sir Topham Hat, and play "baseball". (You know, baseball: anything sport that you use a stick-like object to hit a ball." Thomas was very persistent with the game and played for a long time - wanting to switch the color of the ball and putter he used frequently. Veronica was into making up her own strategy: start by placing the ball directly next to the whole and then either hit it in or pick it up and put it in.

We stopped at a ie cream stand before getting in the car. Both kids wanted blue ice cream - and the place had just that. Very bright blue, red, and yellow ice cream. Made for pretty faces.

Thomas seems to think that because the big blue engine has his name, that it is "his" train. For the rest of the day, he kept asking, "Where's mine?" I would explain that his train was at home. "No, where's my big one?" Then, I'd have to explain that Thomas had to go back to Sodor.

This has been a confusion for the last year as they've become interested in Thomas & Friends. When reading about or playing with these engines, both of them would ask, "Where Veronica train?" For Christmas Grandma was smart enough to discover Rosie, a pink engine, did not have anything on the side of her engine and wrote "Veronica" on her side so that we would have a Veronica Train. Fortunately she never asked to see Veronica Train while we were at the station.

We're lucky we got Veronica there at all. To pump up the excitement of it, the bedtime story the previous night was a Thomas & Friends book, "The Close Shave." Duck, a green engine, ends up running into a barber shop -right through the wall. After we put them to bed, Veronica cried for a good while. Thomas finally figured out what was wrong.

V: (crying) I don't want to ride on Thomas. I fall off.

T: No, Sissy, that was the green one that crashed. Thomas not crash.

She still wasn't so sure about it on the drive to Connersville, but she was finally convinced it would be OK and she had a great time. She was able to relax about it.

Both of them fell asleep in the car, not two blocks from the train station... with plenty to dream about, I'm sure.