More of the Same

This fall, the children and I picked up a free train table on the side of the road.  It had some water damage and needed a few small repairs, but I figured TLC would make it worth me trying to stuff it into the van for the ride home.

It sat in our basement until the Friday before Christmas, when I decided it was a good idea to paint a base coat on it.  Zeke had forgotten all about it, but when he saw me painting the boards, he was dubious of the change.  After I explained to him that I thought it would look really nice with white boards and tried to convince him that white boards were the wave of the future, I heard him mournfully explaining to the girls that Mama was "paintin' my train table all white." 

And so it stayed, until that fateful 10th day of Christmas when I buckled down to make some gifts for my children.  I worked on it while he napped and then stayed up late to finish after supper.  Three coats of polyurethane later, I was a little woozy, but the next morning, he was over-the-moon with surprise. 

Gumdrop rocks?  Window boxes?  A stained glass window?  You can see my children aren't the only ones using toys for wish fulfillment, ha!  (I should've added a wrap-around porch and a tree-house while I was at it. Oh! And window seats and skylights and an indoor firepole and slide! This could take a while.)

One benefit of the new paint job is that it expands the play from trains to matchbox cars and fuzzy animals, too, which means everyone enjoys it.  So far, this has made it worth the space it occupies.  So far... 

Piper and Luci got there before Aidan...

And Zeke color-coded the cars.