trains!

Jimmy freakin' loves trains! Good thing my dad has so many at his house. A few Christmas's back my dad invested in a train set called GeoTracks and gave us all some under the condition that they live at his house for his grandchildren. Some times they go on loan to the Burch house and quite a huge set-up is created on the back porch. This is where the obsession began. For awhile there, Jimmy would ask everyday, numerous times a day to go to "Emmy's House." He surely wanted to play with his cousins, but he mostly had the trains in mind. I would spend a good portion of my day distracting him from this. Emily then let us have some to take back and build at Baabee's house. Despite the very small area to play with them, Jimmy did end up with a pretty good set-up and he was in heaven having them available to him anytime he wanted. Here was our first attempt:

...But it kept getting revised and slowly expanding.

I guess mom and dad were having fun with it too.

When we would finally put them away he would just end up dragging us back to the closet were he knew they were kept and beg us until we would give in. I was also awoken many a morning by the word "Trains!" and lots of poking and dragging. We have managed to keep them away for awhile now, but I am sure they will make a comeback soon. Jimmy just inherited his dad's old Brio tracks so those are the trains of the moment.

Also, Phoenix has a really cool Railroad Park for kids with trains to ride, a cool model train room, a carousel, a real train to tour, and a great playground. You can imagine how Jimmy feels about it. Mimi was the first one to take him there and he talked about it for weeks ("Trains. Mimi. Trains. Mimi"). Then we went back with Cassie, and it was more of the same. Unfortunately, it is too hot to go this time of year, but I am sure we will make many trips in the future. And in the tradition of Robert Balint, I think Jimmy just might have to have a birthday party there some day.