Sunday, January 04, 2009

The Making of a Christmas Miracle

Step one - Traipse to store to admire pick out train set.

Step two - See that there is only one train set on floor, assume there are more in back, go home to think about major purchase.

Step three- Decide this is, indead, the exact set you want, take off early from work and drive to toy store only to discover that they are sold out and may get more in a few days.

Step four - Drive across town while on hold with ANOTHER toy store to see if they have it in stock. Pull into their parking lot without actually getting off hold (20 mintues later) only to discover that they too are sold out.

Step five - cuss self for not buying one remaining train set when had a chance.

Step six - Call store at end of the week when their truck was supposed to come in only to find out that train set was not on that truck but might be on another one later.

Step seven - panic a little when you realize that all your son has said for three weeks is "Santa Choo Choo" and Santa might not be able to deliver

Step eight - Order train set on-sale on line but with shipping basically pay what you would have paid in the store

Step nine - Go to parents house on December 12th with wild ideas of putting train set together in record time. Open box and realize that there are approximately one million seven hundred thousand pieces.

Step ten - close box and transport it to basement of our house

Step eleven - pull box out on December 20th and cuss many pieces slightly.

Step twelve - 45 minutes later you have two drawers. Go team!!

Step thirteen - Two hours into the project the table is put together.

Step fourteen - Open the little boxes and see thousands of little train pieces, have small heart attack, weep silently and give up for the night.

Step fifteen - Spend another hour on December 22nd putting together a round house and other miscellaneous pieces.

Step sixteen - The great assembly starts at 9:15 and is finished by 10:00. There are a few cuss words shed and a small moment when I almost chucked afformentioned round house at Jake's head but the train set is together and it looks great.

Step seventeen - awake at 7:00 and stare at the clock. Is he awake yet? Do I hear him stiring?
Step eighteen - Realize that all of the hard work was worth it to see this moment

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Sorry it took me so long to get this up. Things here are crazy and the site will probably go dark for a couple of days. Tax season is starting, we're trying to refinance our house, and lots of personal issues do not leave much time for blogging. I hope to be back soon!!

6 comments:

Bird's Eye View Photography said...

oh what a great time he must have with that! How fun!

Erin said...

That is so sweet! Joe glued our train set pieces to the table. :)

OMH said...

Ahhhhhhh that is sweet......umm gluing pieces to the table might not be a bad idea for Heather to save Jake's head!!!!!!

Every mom has been there on the second guessing for Christmas....mine was 1985 ordered three dolls through Sears called Cabbage Patch Dolls they came in they were UGLY decided I didn't want them........within in 2 weeks found out if I had gotten them I could have sold them to pay for all of Christmas and a new car hehehe.....

Hindsite is 20/20

Anonymous said...

Oh, I had to laugh - we had almost the same exact story with Lennon at Zack's age!

At first I thought about gluing down the pieces with a hot glue gun but then I realized how much fun it is to build lots of different tracks with your kids. The L's and I still build enormous tracks and make different stations with their Fisher Price house, barn, etc and they are almost 6 and 8.

The only advice I would give in hindsight is to spend your money on the tracks and build on the floor - the table is never big enough to make cool tracks and we always have built on the floor after the first track built on Christmas Eve for the big unveil.

You could probably sell your ALREADY BUILT table and buy more track pieces as he grows :-)

LivingLifeBackwards said...

This is what we got Xavier last year. You got the actual Thomas set! We get the generic set and it keeps him entertained for HOURS but as far as gluing down the pieces... yeahhhhh X has ripped them up I don't know how many times!

Topcat said...

Awesome, awesome photos and post. Loved it. EXACTLY what I would have done ... plus, I love your before and after office pics! My office looks like your before pics.

Thank you for your support. Hope you are going ok.
XOXOX