It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like ...

I apologize.  It's been a long hiatus.  I never finished the vacation posts from last August, and I kept putting off new posts until I finished those, and, well ... you see where that's gotten me.

Meanwhile my young grandchild continues to provide me with more joy than I could have possibly imagined.   He's talking so much now.  

Apparently, the other night (he's a little over 2 and a half now) he told Kristin the other day "Mom, I need you to call Santa on the phone and tell him I NEED my new train tracks now." 

He has a whole Thomas set-up at our house and at his house, and both Mom & Dad and Papa & Nana are getting him more track for Christmas.

He also loves to play with my N-Scale electric train -- not really made for that kind of playing and he actually may have broken the engine ... we'll see.  But I figured out why he's suddenly so fascinated with it.   He put it on a glass table and said it was "ice", and says "the train is sliding on the ice", and when he's playing with it he replays another scene from the movie by yelling "Stop the train!  Stop the train!"   The Bachmann 4-8-4 ATSF engine I have looks a lot like the Polar Express train to him.

He seems to love the drama of putting the train back on the track -- which isn't an easy feat with N-Scale trains and 46 year old eyes in a relatively dark corner of the living room.  The wheels are small, the cars are light, the tracks are tiny -- and then add a grandson crawling on top of you while you do it.   "This is hard, isn't it Trenton?" 

"Don't worry, Pop.  I will help you!", he replies.

He's actually gotten to the point where he's getting cars back on the track correctly by himself, though the engine is very difficult and often it's just most of the way back on (the front wheels are very floppy).

Now I'm thinking of going and getting a Brio wooden train and painting it, and maybe adding some pieces to it and making it look like the Polar Express Train.  He loves that movie.

The Groves came and visited us back in early October, I think it was.  Man, Cassie is growing up.  I know I saw her at the beginning of August, but she floored me when they walked in our house, she looked so grown up with her hair cut and a (very) little makeup, I think, and not wearing playclothes.

It all went way too fast, as they were in for less than 24 hours.  We went to campus and wandered the Quad, and checked out Ellis Library a bit.  Campus has changed a lot since Mark visited it last.  Then we headed to Itchy's (mostly so the kids could look at Magic cards).  But mostly we just hung at the house.  Cards and guitars and yacking.

I have been, as Dad used to say, busier than a hound dog at a flea circus, relatively speaking.  Haven't been on walkabout in quite a while as Ryan's new job is keeping him very occupied.   Paul and Barbara came down and visited in late October, and we'd gotten ready for Jim and Carol the next weekend but they had to cancel because they suddenly sold their house near Vegas (*sniff!*) and had to go move.   I've been involved in a local Tea Party group here in Central Missouri, and of course whenever we get a chance to babysit we pretty much drop everything and happily do it.

I got a snazzy new phone.  I call it a smart-"ish" phone.... because T-Mobile considers it a "Phone First" phone rather than an internet device you can also make calls on ... but it has a good web browser and does applications and all.  I have to use reading glasses to read the screen, but I have to use those more and more anyway (even at work).  It has a pretty crappy 2MP camera that takes OK snapshots in broad daylight (above photo of Vicki) and fuzzy blu-ish looking ones indoors.  It takes pretty good video, though.  So anyway, I get the advantages of a smart phone but only $10 a month for unlimited internet.  That rocks.

Well I'll try to be better about posting and I do need to go back and fill in the rest of the vacation posts.  I have a brief voice log on a portable voice recorder .... I made the recording as I drove home.

So hopefully, this means "I'm back".