Are there still children in this middle class world that aren’t in love with Thomas? Or at least aren’t romanticized by large, old trains? Certainly not in our house, and a little while back, Ezra had the chance to go and meet his cartoon obsession in person.

Thomas the Tank Engine, along with a few other characters, and all the commercialism came for their annual visit to the Colorado Train Museum. It turns out to be quite the orchestrated, mass visited event, but the climax of the trip is a chance to ride on a train pulled by Thomas. Us, a couple of Ezra’s best friends (parents included) and a few hundred other friends made the loop around the train yard a few times before being put back onto the museum grounds.

Even though the marketing component of the traveling circus is extremely large, it was a lot of fun to be immersed into Sodor and the train museum – which is pretty super cool. It was great fun to be able to share the experience with some seasoned veterans of the Thomas ride, and I’m not entirely sure that we will be able to miss it next year.

Somehow recreation leagues have gotten away with completely redefining the seasons. According to them, Ezra participated in a ‘fall’ soccer league, which was in fact from the beginning of August through the beginning of October. By any calendar calculations, that would put it at seven weeks of summer, and two weeks of fall. This can be confusing to people, especially when you start talking about signing up for a season based league that has the majority of it in another season than advertised. They really should consider stopping the laziness of stealing another season’s moniker, and create one that would be more appropriate to what time frame is actually covered. Perhaps instead of ‘fall’ they can call it the ‘back to school and get sick’ league; and instead of ‘spring’ they can call it the ‘oh well, skiing is over, now it’s time to play soccer again’ league. I don’t know, just a few suggestions.

Anyhow…Ezra did in fact participate in his first soccer league this ‘fall’ and it lived up to all of the hype that a four year old league can. For him and most of his teammates, it was their first time playing an organized sport, so there was a huge learning curve to even understand the concepts of a game, a team, goals, etc. The few kids that had previously played – or have older siblings that play – had a significant advantage over those that were going at it for the first time. And if your not a parent, and don’t understand how different a few months of physical development can be at four years old…just head over to a soccer game and watch for a while.

He did all of the typical things that would be expected of someone his age and something so new – needless to say, he isn’t showing all signs of becoming the next Messi just yet. But he tried (most of the time) and he did improve greatly over the first practice/game of the season; and most importantly he had fun and stated that he would like to do it again. The team called themselves the Broncos, and it was a great group of kids and parents. Relaxed, yet supportive and encouraging; we never saw anything that was negatively newsworthy throughout any of the games.

As Ezra got to experience a first, so did we…..figuring out how to work dinner around a scheduled weekly event. Quick home from work, quick change into gear, quick gather everything…crap, we forgot to wash his socks again, quick drive over to the fields, quick get his shoes on…crap, we forgot to bring some water, quick grab the jacket that we left in the car, quick eat a snack, quick drive home…crap, dinner planned will take an hour to cook, and finally quick figure something else out instead. Ah, it all begins.