One last dash of summer

Something's coming!

The kids have been back in school for almost two weeks but this morning the weather reminded us for certain that summer was over. Before summer ended, however, Robert and I reached a goal we have been talking about for almost as long as we've lived in this house.

Our little boy loves trains, has loved trains for as long as he can remember. And while our fourth grader's days of watching Thomas the Tank Engine have been long left behind, there are plenty of other ways to enjoy trains around here.

There are train tracks about six blocks from our house, the perfect distance, in my estimation. They are close enough that you can hear trains blow their horns, but not very loudly. I wouldn't want to live much closer.

I don't remember whether Robert came up with the idea or I did, but at some point one of us heard a train whistle and thought it would be neat to go down to the tracks and watch it go by. And as we were riding bikes one day, it occurred to me that Robert was definitely capable of riding with me to go see one. And it's been our goal ever since, although for more than a year, we hadn't even attempted it.

Cate has started working an early morning shift, so I've been either with the kids all morning while working at home, or lately, making sure they get fed, dressed and out the door to school. In the last week before school started, Robert came downstairs to me in my office and said, "Dad, can we do something today?"

It was right around noon. Normally I would have to say that I couldn't, but the previous day Verizon had let me know that my contract was being cut by a little over two weeks. I'm a very loyal employee but was still reeling from that punch to the gut, so I was a little more open to, say, taking a long lunch. The train goal popped into my head, so we went out to the garage, made sure all of our bikes had enough air in the tires, and set them up, ready to go at a moment's notice near the garage door.

Satisfied we were ready to go, we went inside to wait. We were not waiting long, however. I hadn't even gotten my shoes off when I heard the first whistle of the train. That crossing point is almost two miles away, and the freight trains don't come through the neighborhoods very fast at all. I alerted Robert, who hadn't even heard it yet, and we sprang into action. Open the garage door, water bottle from the fridge, helmets, let Elizabeth know she was in charge of Colleen, and bolt.

Robert is one happy camper as the train goes by.

While we're riding, we get the ultimate reminders of our destination. The train horn sounds at three other crossings before it gets to ours, on Xerxes. Robert is saying, "it's getting closer!" and I'm certainly wishing he had a multi-speed bike so he could go faster, but he is pumping his little legs off. Three quarters of a mile, with a slow, gradual uphill grade and a busy intersection in between takes a 9-year-old a long time with one gear, but we end up making it in plenty of time. The train is still several blocks away when we get there.

We settled in a spot very close to the tracks, much closer than the cars' stop line. The train blew its horn as it approached our crossing and I acknowledged the drivers so they knew we weren't completely oblivious.

As the train went by, Robert marveled at how large it was. He hasn't been this close to a moving freight train in quite a while, and of course, it's bigger than the light rail train we've ridden to the ballgame. The train wasn't very long, and the show was over in a couple of minutes, but he loved it, so it was worth the trip. And the timing couldn't have been better.

Mission complete.

Gap kids

Who lost a tooth now you ask? Robert!

He lost his first tooth at bedtime tonight (evidently a good time to lose teeth, who knew?). He calmly handed me his tooth and said "It's out." This doesn't seem to bother either of them. Doesn't anyone freak out when losing a tooth anymore? I remember coddling my loose teeth until they were hanging literally by a thread.

Robert doesn't really get to have a gap tooth picture though. His permanent tooth has been coming in steadily right behind. He still looks like a shark though, the spot right next to his new gap has both the baby tooth and the permanent one behind it.

Okay, so that's an inventory of Robert's teeth, just in case the world was wondering. Now, he's off to sleep. Right, Robert?

A Coleman Halloween

This is a notable Halloween for many reasons. It's our first in Minnesota, our first without Cate (unfortunately) and the first one where Colleen truly gets it.

I have two good friends who each have kids who got invited to last-minute parties. Neither is a big fan of Halloween this year, and I can't say I particularly was either. I much prefer staying home and handing out candy, letting Cate and the kids come back with all the stories and maybe taking whichever children are old enough back out for a second round after the youngest are too tired to continue.

So I was dreading it, a little bit. I'm not a big fan of chaos and this is a day rife with it. But for those who know me, I'll have you know, I kept my cool all the way through.

Cate did a great job of laying the groundwork before she went out of town, and mom has a great archive of costumes to choose from. Colleen's pumpkin and Robert's devil are Coleman classics. Elizabeth is a vampire witch. (The cape is apparently the vampire part.) She didn't want to wear the hat, but I asked her if she would wear it for the group photo and she ended up keeping it on most of the night.

And in addition, it was incredible weather for trick or treating. There were a ton, just a ton of kids out there tonight. We went to a party at the local park, where they had a few activities for the kids that kept them occupied for perhaps a half-hour. One of the rooms had been converted into a space ship having landed on a foreign planet, and upon learning it didn't have a name, Elizabeth dubbed it Xzandorf. (Google this word later. Currently it's not in the database at all.)

So the plan (and it was Cate's, and it was a good one) was to trick-or-treat on the way home. Robert picked out a particularly interesting-looking house on 43rd Street and walked up. This is Colleen's first full-understanding experience of the event, and the porch was a little scary. (Flash lit it all up here, so not even nearly the same atmosphere.) Red lighting, a skeleton, and a spider that crawled down from the ceiling. But she stuck it out, got her candy and even said thank you most times. Though sometimes she was off message, with you're welcome. Or pumpkin. Or trick or treat.

There were a lot of really interesting houses, but only one which Colleen wouldn't go near. Neighbors up the hill had a whole setup, with people sitting on the lawn next to the stairs ready to scare you, a horror movie-masked person on the sidewalk, someone with a microphone hiding in the trees describing who was walking by, a fire pit, etc.

The strangest thing we got? Probably the Cool Ranch Doritos. Lots of mini Snickers, Baby Ruths, and the like. Missing from our youth, the red hots, the candy corn and other loose items. There wasn't a single apple, no popcorn, no Now & Laters, very few Smarties.

And we had another meeting of the generations. The old Coleman rule was you could eat whatever you wanted on Oct. 31, to the point of getting sick, and that was it. Cate and I favor the kids being able to get to bed, so we limit them to three things tonight ... and we'll figure out how to parcel out the rest as the days go by.

I thought Colleen was going to give me trouble with the three pieces rule. She couldn't decide which three she wanted, or more accurately she would decide and then change her mind. So she would start to grab something else, and I would ask her if she wanted to trade one of her three pieces for it. She was always willing, though, and didn't complain too much when the contents of the bag went away for the night.

They will get help disposing of it, no doubt. Even Elizabeth, who went to the trouble of taking an inventory of her haul. I told her that was only going to make for trouble later.

I can only hope our friends had nights that were as good as this was.

More pictures, on my Facebook page (public).

My little girl *sniff sniff*

Elizabeth went on a field trip today to the Waterford One Room Schoolhouse. The whole class, including her teacher, Miss Jones, dressed in 19th century costumes. We cooked up a costume from an old dress of mine, black tights, braids with ribbons on the ends, a homemade mop cap (courtesy of her friend, Nicole) and brown shoes. She also carried a basket for her lunch wrapped in parchment paper - no ziploc bags allowed in the 19th century. The only modern invention she brought was her umbrella but thankfully she didn't need to use it.

Anyway, this post is not about the field trip per se. It's about the shoes. She got new shoes for the occasion (could only find one shoe of her previous pair). And, drum roll please, the new pair was a ladies size 7. And they aren't too big on her. She probably needs a 7.5 but she was asleep last night when I made the shoe-emergency run to The Circle Store, a.k.a. Target.

My little girl is growing up so quickly. I see photos of her new cousin, Amelia, and it's like seeing Elizabeth (but with lots more hair). It feels like just yesterday that I was holding her in my arms. Now I'm trying not to cry. I should listen to my mother more. She told me then that this would happen.

I felt just as blown away when I saw that little bit of tooth showing in her baby gums. I basically had a panic attack. My thoughts went from "how cute - her first tooth" to "Oh No! She's going to use that tooth to chew food! And she'll ride a bike and she'll ride a school bus without me and she'll graduate from high school and college and she'll be grown up before I get a chance to blink!!" Size 7 shoe and growing... we're well on our way.