Thomas the Tank Engine does not want to be found

Yesterday, R walks over to me and hands me a section of the paper, all crisply and neatly folded.


Dude. Seriously. You know I only read Parade Sunday Magazine, and then I go through the good ads - Target, Walmart, JC Penney, and of course the coupons. What on earth are you handing me? So I look.

Thomas the Tank Engine is coming to a city very near here. Next weekend. It's Thomas' 65th anniversary or something. I took T to A Day Out with Thomas right after S was born at Tweetsie Railroad in North Carolina. As great days with the T-man go, that day was one of the top three.

T was obsessed with Thomas for a very long time. He would spend hours putting together tracks and pulling this huge line of trains around. I'm pretty sure we've seen every Thomas video that was ever created. Even S was really into Thomas for a while, which sparked a renewal in T's obsession. But since we've been here and the kids haven't really had a playroom where they could leave their toys out, T has slowly been backing away from the Thomas stuff, even though he still loves all things train related. It's a little bittersweet, actually.


I look up the information. The Thomas-palooza is only about 20 miles from here. The tickets really aren't that expensive, and the weather is supposed to be beautiful. R is going to be working Saturday, and since he is the least Thomas tolerant of the four of us, I'm liking this idea more and more.


I show the ad to the kids and ask them if they want to go. Of course they do. Awesome! But as I look at the directions, I don't find them to be all that...clear. So before I put in my credit card info and buy the tickets, I decide that we should do a trial run to the train yard and back. That will give me a better idea of when we need to leave, what train ride to buy a ticket for, and so on. Better safe than sorry, right? And since it will just be me and the kids, I don't want to end up anywhere that I won't feel safe.

After R got home from work today, I floated my trial run idea by him. He thought it was a good idea too, so off we went. And we went. And again, the GPS failed us. We weren't surprised because Google Maps didn't like the address either. We even stopped at a couple places and asked if anyone knew how to find this place. No dice. After looking and driving in circles for about 30 minutes, we decided to go back home. Maybe now that we'd been in the general area, the directions would make a little more sense. But I gotta say, the general area was a bit run down and while I'd be fine taking the kids during the day, I really would not want to be wandering around there after dark. At all.

We get home and I look up the directions again. According to the website, we were right there. If we were right there, I'm concerned because there was nothing that looked like it could be turned into Thomas-palooza in weeks, much less a few days. What to do....