Busiest Weekend of the Year.....

. . .  and I'm messing around with the computer.....

This morning, DH and I joined 3 other members of DD's train club to set up our O scale stuff for National Train Day in Toledo, which is tomorrow.  The Heritage Train is here and DD is miserable because we won't take him to see it tonight.  One of the reasons for that is that there's a Train Club business meeting tonight.  Should be pretty short, I hope.

So tomorrow, we get down to the Toledo Terminal Train Station bright and early.  It's a really cool art deco station, by the way.

{{Insert pics here.... oh, Blogspot is having a little hissy and won't load pic for me.....}}

BadAmy and L were married here, and it was a fantastic location for that!

Then DH and DD will stay at the station, and I'll head over to the world class Toledo Museum of Art for the dedication of the Ohio Historical marker, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouting.  There will be blah blah blah speeches, a couple of troops will sing songs, then we'll 're-enact' a photo that was taken of Scouts on the Museum steps.  Cool.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to wear my badge sash.....

Then we troop inside and spend the night in the museum!!!  The last I heard there were 1500 girls and several hundred adults signed up, including yours truly.  This is quite literally a once in a lifetime opportunity.  I'm pretty sure we don't get to sleep in the Cloister or with the mummies....

After staying up most of the night, and sleeping on the floor--something I never do any more--I'll come home and pack the trailer.  Oh, and I'll have to put away the train stuff we got out for the display downtown, too.  We've told friends to come over Sunday after 4 for a BYOEverything cookout.

I will hopefully sleep like a log Sunday night, get up Monday morning and send my youngest child off to his last day at the Anthony Wayne High School, go to the ankle doc's at lunch time, pick up said child at school, come home, put suitcase and backpack in the car, and will maybe be able to sleep.....

Tuesday, I put my middle child on the bus at 6:35 a.m.,  and leave sometime after that with youngest for a 4 month sojourn to the west and work.

So I'm sitting around blogging and playing online Scrabble. 

The thing that takes a back seat in the summer is blogging.  I'll be reading yours as often as I can get to a computer, and maybe even once in a while I'll drop you a line.  I'll still be on FB, usually every day, and of course there's the old fashioned method of communication:

Ranger Anna
5 Madison Ranger Station
Yellowstone National Park,  WY  82190

It's been a wonderful ride with you all so far.  Thanks for coming along.

What a Good Dad

National Train Day will be celebrated in Toledo on Saturday, May 5th.  DD lives for this day, the highlight of traindom for him.  Two years ago, he hopped the Amtrak train that visited while they switched the engines to pull out for the evening.  Nothing like have a hobo for a son.

Lately, he's been glued to several train-cams around the country.  One of them is in Chesterton, Indiana and on the line that runs through Swanton, the town just north of us. Both the Capitol Limited and the Lake Shore Limited use this track.

One night during his spring break, he comes barreling into our room around 8 p.m. yelling that the "Bloody Nose" just went through Chesterton!  What the..... ?    

For Amtrak's 40th Anniversary, they re-released several "heritage locomotives," including the Phase I engine, aka the Bloody Nose, due to the red paint on the front of the engine.  Some folks loved the paint job, some hated it, but they all called it the same thing. 

That's the Bloody Nose, on the left, then 4 more heritage units, and the current Amtrak locomotive. Scary that I know this.

Back to our story.  If an Amtrak train goes through Chesterton around 8 p.m. it can only mean it's east bound, and headed to Swanton and Toledo.  DH and I glanced at each other, and we knew there was a trip out to see trains in our future.  Luckily for me, the Good Dad was willing to get out and take DD all the way to the Toledo Union Terminal to see it.

It arrived in Toledo about 20 minutes late, or around 11:30 p.m., but DD was elated.  He snapped a few pictures, yakked with some riders, and came home a very, very happy young man.

If we could all be so easily entertained and amazed.