Have you ever been present when someone who LOVES something beyond measure does that something for the first time? Like, oh, a 2-year-old who has loved trains since he could grab a toy train and push it across the floor. Who rarely sits still but will sit through an entire episode of Thomas and Friends. Who will spend hours driving a remote-control train around the tracks.

Not so long ago, I had the immense pleasure of being present when this little boy took his first ride on a real train during A Day Out with Thomas at the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie, WA. The ride was short, the seat was hard, the train car was from the early 1900s, and he could barely see out the window but he didn’t care. And the look on his face as we boarded the train and the train started to move was a priceless moment.