When Mom is friends with Santa. . .

Last week a co-worker and I were talking kids and Christmas. I've worked with this guy for about 6 years now - both at my current employer and the place we both worked at prior. His kids are older than mine, although still fairly young enough that he remembers rather clearly those 2 year old days.

In the course of conversation it came up that my boy is longing for nothing but trains for Christmas - and most especially stuff for his Thomas and Friends collection. In that split moment of confession, my friend smiled knowingly and said "We had all that stuff but my son's outgrown it now. Hey, I'd love to clear out the basement! Do you want any of that stuff?"

Well hell yeah! Bring it on. And so he did. A box full.

Of course being that I only work two days a week I just got the box today. And, being that its Christmas week and it is a Very "Tommy" Christmas in our house (Tommy being the loving nickname my child has bestowed upon this particular genre of toy.), I figured now was not the time to break out the box of hand-me downs. But when did we hand them over. Was it on Christmas day? Was it the day after? The day after that?How long did these awesome gems go waiting?

Before we could answer that we had to check out the goods. All in pristine shape and all mostly intact save for two missing slabs of coal for the one giant coal loading building. Since this was something Logan wouldn't know was missing, it's no big deal. Essential parts were there. But did we wrap it and hand it out as a gift? Well no. The boy is too clever you see. He knows Thomas comes in blue striped boxes and seeing no blue stripped boxes to unwrap could be an issue.

We are doing the next best thing - perhaps even a BETTER thing. Santa, you see, also likes Thomas and Friends. Santa likes him so much, in fact, that when he's dropping off presents on Christmas Eve he's going to set up Logan's tracks and play while munching on cookies. He'll be so emersed in play, that he'll pull out a few new pieces and add them to his track layout then decide to leave them - with a note explaining it all. Perhaps he'll be thoughtful enough to add a ribbon to each new piece if Mom isn't too lazy to locate ribbon that night. When Mr Boy comes down the hall Saturday to survery the loot he'll likely head straight for the tree in the sunroom - heading through the kitchen and therefore missing his track set up where it always ends up in the living room. This just means the surprises keep showing up longer as we later direct him to the new pieces waiting for him.

I'm so excited I can't wait. I almost think it'd be fun to go ahead and unwrap the other pieces Santa is leaving so we can set them up too! ;)