ehbowen
Engineer
Note for this forum: I wrote this for a family memory project my now 89-year-old Dad is working on. Thought I would share.
This is Eric, again. I had toyed with the idea of a family train trip ever since our successful jaunt to and from Michigan. One idea I had floated and even priced was that of returning to Michigan…in December! The plan, which never made it past the early stages, was to obtain tickets for the Steam Railroading Institutes “North Pole Express” and then head up there as soon as the kids finished with classes at Christmas break. But we couldn’t have taken more than four plus two adults, and when I floated the idea to Mom (Nancy) the response was along the lines of, “Are you crazy!”
But what we settled on was even more crazy…five adults (Nancy, Ken, me, and Joey & Erin) and the six Lichnovsky kids, heading from Houston to the west coast in May 2006…destination Disneyland! We made the plans and then broke the news to the kids at Christmas with a “scavenger hunt” series of letters. First we gave one to the baby, Allie, who was less than a year old at the time; it said, “Why? Because we like you!” and directed the next oldest, Abby, to look in Nana’s bathroom cabinet to see ‘Who’. There the kids found a list of all of our names, and a note directing five-year-old Benjamin to look in the garage workbench to see ‘When.’ The kids were really getting into it by now, and there they found a calendar with the last week in May circled and the instruction for Cassidy to look in the file cabinet to see ‘What’. They found a clipping from the newspaper travel section about vacations and instructions for Cameron to look in the upstairs closet to see ‘How’. He found a toy train and instructions for Bethany, who was nearly a teenager and had pretty much figured this out by now from family rumors, to look in the Victrola to see ‘Where’. When she found a DVD of ‘Disneyland Fun’, the kids basically went nuts.
During the next few months we had some build-up. We gave the kids some “Disney Dollars” which they could spend at the parks, and I held a “pin draft”. Pin trading was a “thing” at Disney parks in those days, and possibly still even today…I don’t have the time or money to find out! As with anything when adults get involved some become rare and valuable, while others are ‘can’t be bothered’, and…well. Still, I found a collector selling a lot of 40 authentic Disney pins on eBay, and then we held a “pin draft”. I laid out all 40 pins, and then one at a time I let the kids (except Allie, who was still too young) come up and select their favorite, one at a time, from the youngest to the oldest. So all five of them ended up with eight pins. I told them to hang on to them; they were sold at stores at the park and could be traded back and forth. The technical term for this is “foreshadowing”…
Fast-forward now to Friday, May 19th. Houston doesn’t have much of a train station these days; it basically looks like something you might have found in a small town in 1950 with “Greyhound” or “Trailways” on the door. But we filled it up.
This is Eric, again. I had toyed with the idea of a family train trip ever since our successful jaunt to and from Michigan. One idea I had floated and even priced was that of returning to Michigan…in December! The plan, which never made it past the early stages, was to obtain tickets for the Steam Railroading Institutes “North Pole Express” and then head up there as soon as the kids finished with classes at Christmas break. But we couldn’t have taken more than four plus two adults, and when I floated the idea to Mom (Nancy) the response was along the lines of, “Are you crazy!”
But what we settled on was even more crazy…five adults (Nancy, Ken, me, and Joey & Erin) and the six Lichnovsky kids, heading from Houston to the west coast in May 2006…destination Disneyland! We made the plans and then broke the news to the kids at Christmas with a “scavenger hunt” series of letters. First we gave one to the baby, Allie, who was less than a year old at the time; it said, “Why? Because we like you!” and directed the next oldest, Abby, to look in Nana’s bathroom cabinet to see ‘Who’. There the kids found a list of all of our names, and a note directing five-year-old Benjamin to look in the garage workbench to see ‘When.’ The kids were really getting into it by now, and there they found a calendar with the last week in May circled and the instruction for Cassidy to look in the file cabinet to see ‘What’. They found a clipping from the newspaper travel section about vacations and instructions for Cameron to look in the upstairs closet to see ‘How’. He found a toy train and instructions for Bethany, who was nearly a teenager and had pretty much figured this out by now from family rumors, to look in the Victrola to see ‘Where’. When she found a DVD of ‘Disneyland Fun’, the kids basically went nuts.
During the next few months we had some build-up. We gave the kids some “Disney Dollars” which they could spend at the parks, and I held a “pin draft”. Pin trading was a “thing” at Disney parks in those days, and possibly still even today…I don’t have the time or money to find out! As with anything when adults get involved some become rare and valuable, while others are ‘can’t be bothered’, and…well. Still, I found a collector selling a lot of 40 authentic Disney pins on eBay, and then we held a “pin draft”. I laid out all 40 pins, and then one at a time I let the kids (except Allie, who was still too young) come up and select their favorite, one at a time, from the youngest to the oldest. So all five of them ended up with eight pins. I told them to hang on to them; they were sold at stores at the park and could be traded back and forth. The technical term for this is “foreshadowing”…
Fast-forward now to Friday, May 19th. Houston doesn’t have much of a train station these days; it basically looks like something you might have found in a small town in 1950 with “Greyhound” or “Trailways” on the door. But we filled it up.
Last edited: