Train Surprise

We went to my home town for Thanksgiving and visited both of my parents. When we got to my dad's house, for whatever reason Gibbie decided to go straight upstairs. What did he find waiting for him but a Lionel model train! We all had a lot of fun making it go and getting it to unload its cargo of logs. Apparently it will have an expanded track the next time we come. Thanks grandpa Bill!

Train Watching

Gibbie has been into trains lately. Who can blame him? Trains are cool. I decided to figure out how we could get close to some real trains safely and legally. There are some major tracks that cut a path across St. Paul. Some streets go over them (like Snelling and Lexington), some are cut off by them (like Victoria), and one turns into a footbridge!

We decided to camp out on the Hamline footbridge over the tracks (between Pierce Butler and Energy pkwy.) We brought a picnic lunch on our bikes and watched the trains slowly coming and going. There wasn't much activity, but it was enough to get Gibbie excited. Some of the railroad people even waved and honked at us!Libby got a couple of good kid books about trains from the library. It's pretty fun that already Gib can get excited about a topic and we can learn some things together. I didn't know until last night what a knuckle coupler is, for example. Do you?