Choo-Choo

Samuel has lately had a fascination with all things trains. He will even line things up in a row and go choo-choo. It was really fun while we were on our trip to Wisconsin Dells to have a "train day." We road a 1/3 quarter scale train and ate at a train restaurant where your food was delivered by a train.

We have been thinking for awhile about his upcoming birthday and what to get him. After attending a Thomas the train day at our local toy store., we realized how fascinated he was with the train table. We thought this might be a good gift to get. Of course, the authentic Thomas stuff is pretty expensive. We had found a nice alternative train set/table at Toys R us, but was still pretty spendy. It was then we turned to Craig's list. We have not done a lot with this site, but found plenty of good options..... Our first one we visited was an authentic Thomas octagon table that was beautiful with track, 3 buildings, and 4 trains. Nice.. still $150. The second was a place I found in Bloomington. A white table with track and trains. I had seen this table all over craig's list and this lady had it priced at $35 for everything. I contacted her and arranged to go see it. She had found a small chip and lowered it to $30. Again, I was not sure though if the condition would be good and that first one was a beautiful piece of furniture. We went and saw it last night and when we got there, she said that she really just wanted to get it out of her house and she would give it to us for FREE!!!! David and I looked at each other and were in shock. This family had a beautiful house and lots of toys and did truelly need the space. I tried to give her something, but she wanted us to just have it. How very generous!!! I'm still in awe.
It is a nice solid table with two storage drawers, lots of track, bridge, mountain and many trains and other pieces. The kids loved it!!!!. Now for his birthday we can get him some other accessories. I know it's silly to say, but it is amazing how God provides. We try to be good stewards of what He has given us, and it's things like this that show again his goodness in every situation. I'm so grateful for our parents who taught us to spend our money wisely, shop around, and look for deals. I have seen many times where things like this happen and the money that was saved can go to help someone else. So thanks, to this generous family in Bloomington our kids will get hours of enjoyment... hopefully someday we to can pass this along to another family that will enjoy it.

Look at the concentration in playing trains

A view of the table
I think David and I have enjoyed setting up the tracks/rails just as much as the kids.