All Aboard!

Three sons and five grandboys have provided me with an education on many topics:  dinosaurs, rockets, balls of all sorts, cars, and bodily functions (including peeing in window wells) to name a few.  However, my first generation train education, it appears, was not quite up to snuff.  Generation two is filling in the gaps.

On Christmas afternoon we built Gingerbread houses. (Short traffic stop:  I'm not sure Gingerbread should be capitalized, but since it includes my sister's name, it seems adequate enough reason for a big "G".  Now back to my normal flow of consciousness.)  In real life, I actually get paid to design houses, so you might think "game on" for houses.  And it was:  Court and Jorie made some great houses (view to left and to the right)!  For reasons I soon learned to regret, I made a Christmas train.  (Christmas is capitalized for many reasons, including acknowledgement of what an amazing day it was in 2014.  There is either a frustrated English teacher in me begging to be released, or I just know too many of them.  I suspect the latter.)

Aidan,current family railroad officiant, was my design consultant.  "No, Granma,all green on the front for the cow catcher."  (I won that battle - we needed a red smile for our engine.)

"Is that a tender, Granma?  We need a real tender.  Where is the coupler?" Candy cane to the rescue.

"Where is the caboosie?"

"You mean the caboose?  The last car is the caboose, right?"

"Yeah, we need a caboose."  So we made another car, which for three-year-old reasons far beyond my understanding, did not qualify as either a caboose OR a caboosie.

"Granma, we need a caboose."  Apparently caboose and caboosie are interchangeable for those under the age of five.  A quick dash to the kitchen to make more icing/glue, and I tried again.  "No, Granma, that's not a caboosie."

"But it's the last car."  I failed at both caboose design and adequate train logic.

Fortunately at this point I was saved by the bell - the dinner bell.  Dinner wasn't ready, but at the rate I was going, it might be midnight before I correctly sculpted an edible caboosie.  I escaped to the kitchen to prepare food that would actually be eaten.

Next year I will study up on train design.  Or better yet, I'll make a Gingerbread version of the Empire State Building - life size even.  It must be easier!

Happy New Year to Thomas, and James, and Percy, and Diesel - and Aidan, the master engineer!