Campfire After A Busy Day

As I mentioned in a previous post, we attended the Rutland Railway Association's train show on Saturday. We had driven down to Rutland in the morning, checked out all the beautiful autumn foliage and ventured back to Waterbury by mid-afternoon. After spending a few hours with friends at a local pub, we headed to Sheila's parents' house for a visit around a campfire in their backyard.  

Since we were coming from the train show, I had my new G scale train purchase with us. I knew that Lukey would love this train set so I lugged the big box of trains down to the campfire and set the locomotive and cars on the picnic table. As expected, Lukey lit up with excitement! Even Kenzie was a bit excited when Lukey would give her some space at the table.

The kids are at a critical age now... old enough to know their interests and certainly old enough to love accompanying us to train shows... but first they need to learn that most trains at train shows are not for touching. We see so many families having problems with this at all the shows we attend. As a result, I want to teach the kids that some trains are not really for playing as they understand it. If we don't teach them this, then we are setting them up for failure the moment we all set foot into a train show!

At every train show, we see kids being carried out, screaming and crying with arms and legs flailing about, by distraught parents. I certainly don't want that to be us so I'm hoping we can teach the kids to have some control around other people's trains. I have to say, they did fairly well with my new train set the other night. I also realistically understand that if I had left them unsupervised, my new behemoth of a steam locomotive would have been in several pieces when I returned. They did, however, do a really good job of controlling themselves while I was around to keep them from train temptation. After all, even I need someone around to keep me from train temptation!

They wanted to pick up these giant trains but refrained (actually, quite politely too) whenever I would gently tell them no and explain that these trains weren't for playing. And, oddly enough, they seemed content to just gently inspect and caress the stationary train as it sat safe and quietly on the picnic table all night long. 

We'll see what happens when they are on train sensory overload at a big show though...

Anyway, this all occurred around a campfire at Sheila's parents' house on Saturday. We had a very enjoyable time!