It was the best day, it was the best day.

If you've seen the Progressive insurance commercials recently, you might be humming along with me.  "It was the best day... it was the best day."  I looked around online a little, and I didn't come up with the title or composer or the rest of the lyrics, so I'm assuming it's just a jingle someone wrote for the commercial.  But it does make me smile, watching the guy dream of his perfect day with the Progressive insurance sales lady. 

I have to imagine that this morning was something like that perfect dream day for Pete and Chester.  Our Tuesday and Thursday mornings can be a bit hectic, but this morning we made it out the house on time, with no yelling, and everyone dressed (except for Chester's shoes- see yesterday's blog about the ocean...).  Any morning that Mom's not yelling by 7am is a good morning around here!

I looked up the train schedule last week and discovered that there's an 8:01am commuter train at Beverly Depot, which is just down the street from Pete's school.  The reward for leaving the house on time is to pull into the parking lot and watch the train.  It's a great vantage point to view the train because not only do we get to see the train, it's also makes the clang, clang sound as it pulls into the station, sits to wait for passengers getting on and off, then makes the clang, clang again as it pulls away.  This particular train is always going backwards since it's an inbound commuter train, and we get a great view of the engine as it leaves the station. 

Leaving on time, fully dressed, fully fed, with no yelling, and getting to see the train would normally be enough to declare today a success, but the day didn't stop there!  When we arrived at the pre-school parking lot, there was a firetruck in the parking lot.  A brand-new-sparkly red and black firetruck with its lights on.  What a treat.  Seriously.  I'm not sure, but I think there's something in the Y chromosome that makes little boys love firetrucks, because both of my boys are completely infatuated with firetrucks.  Chester's eyes lit up and he screamed in glee, "yuck, yuck, ed yuck".  Though we clearly have problems with T and R and any leading consonant, he got his point across, so we stayed a little longer to stare at the truck after dropping Pete off at school.  After all, my physical therapy appointment wasn't for another 30 minutes, so we had plenty of time. 

And our lolly gagging in the parking lot paid dividends I couldn't have planned!  The doggie day-care down the street must take the large dogs for their walk after the school-drop off to minimize potential dog-child conflict.  However, we had overstayed the drop off time by over 20 minutes, and low-and-behold here come 6 large dogs.  Not little dogs like Killer, but huge, fluffy dogs taller than Chester.  If there's anything more fun than a firetruck, it's a "ig oggie!"  And the squeals of glee moved from "Hi uck" to "Hi Oggie!"

All of these are such little tiny moments in the day, or even an annoyance to many adults, but when you're not even two years old, the innocent joy of seeing a train, firetruck, and big doggies all by 9am is so overwhelming... that you must fall asleep in the car, having fulfilled your excitement quota for the day.