Thread (or Task) and Splash window

I have a word dictionary that gets updated and is basically an independent process.
This is a dictionary of my own making and doesn’t SQL tables.
I realized I could add a Thread to this process to get the updated dictionary, but I have a problem since I have a splash window that informs the user of files being processed. This of course results in the infamous “ThreadAccessingUIException”.

I would really like to not reinvent the process with a progress bar and window, just because it is hard to gauge progress.

The remaining problem is with this line (which will throw the exception)

Dim FLesSplash As New Splash(0)
Apparently I need the NEW in order to dim the window, and I can’t isolate it in an if statement that would threadRunning as condition.

Thoughts and alternatives?

Also, I looked at the UIThreadingWithTask example and can’t figure out how to make it fit to my situation.

What is stored in the Splash(0) Array ?

Splash(0)
That is the constructor. I probably shouldn’t have included that.