mama urchin

Amidst the turkey a certain someone in our house turned two. Really, it’s just hard to believe. My niece — who is five years old — said Soon Tristan will be a tid [kid] and I can’t believe she’s right. Boy the time just flies by. So, a train party happened to celebrate.

Here’s the cake:

Papa gets all credit for the cake and the roundhouse. Thanks Jennifer — no blog — for the great roundhouse idea.

Here’s a view of the table:

I had trouble figuring out what would be “train food” so we just went with Tristan’s favorites. I made the tablecloth from some fabric with vintage train tickets on it and bordered with a black/gray calico.

This is the awesome engine that Papa and his dad, Opa, made:

I told them to make an engine to pull the wagon and left the house. When I came back this is what they had done. It was so much better than I ever thought it could be. We converted the wagon into a coal car and I made some coal — beanbags — and we made a game of tossing the coal into the coal car. It was a big hit, even with the older siblings. The little ones liked to drive the engine too. The tracks are just black electrical tape on the carpet — thanks to Anina for that idea.

And lastly, here’s our little engineer blowing out the candles:

He was especially fond of the skittle wheels although he did seem to like the cake too. He’s been singing Happy Birthday for over a week now and trying to blow out any flame he sees — including those in the fireplace. He got some great gifts too but I’ll save those for another day.