We are lucky in that our move to OKC did not take us too far away from our family and friends back in Austin. We made a trip back to the ATX in January to celebrate some family birthdays and a late Christmas with Doug’s sister and her family. It was so good to see all of the old gang!
Seth’s birthday was just a few weeks away, so we decided to have a little gathering and fulfill part one of his three part birthday wish. TRAINS!
We will get to the other two parts in a later post.
Seth has a real love for trains (I am certain I have mentioned once or a million times). When we lived in Austin, we took a train ride on the Cedar Rock Railroad nearly every week after church. As soon as he heard we were headed to Austin for a few days, the first thing he asked to do was go ride “his” train. We took that wish and ran with it, and booked the train for a few rides for just our group.
Over 50 of our dear friends and family members came out and spent the afternoon with us.
Seth with many of our old ‘hood friends.
Seth and Patton talking politics, no doubt.
Seth and Sister.
Seth and Sara
Loaded up for the first trip around the park.
The weather was dreamy. Back in OKC, where there is actually a winter, most of the train tracks were closed due to ice and snow, so it worked out perfectly to come back to Austin around this time and let Seth get his train high.
It was just like old times. My kids in the dirt with a bunch of their good buddies.
Even the Three Amigos were reunited!
On top of hearing Seth call out, “All aboard!” all afternoon, my favorite part of the day was after we sang happy birthday. In a mess of miscommunication, we all forgot to bring a match or lighter for the candles. Seth was really stoked about blowing out his candles, and had practiced blowing out fire at our birthday dinner the night before at a Japanese steakhouse.
No worries, though. Dad had train whistles placed on the cupcakes and instead of blowing out an unlit candle, he told Seth to blow and held up the whistle to his mouth.
The result was sweet little “TOOT” from the whistle and a HUGE smile of surprise of Seth’s face.
It was a fabulous day. A fabulous visit to Austin.
We went to a lot of our favorite spots in the ATX on that visit, and even drove past our old house. I totally thought that I would get to pining and long to be back there, but just the opposite happened.
I kind of longed to get back home.
Home, as in our home in OKC. I love Austin. I loved being there and living there and making all the great friends and memories there, but my heart has attached itself to a new place.
My home is where family is. Where we are thriving. Where we are all together under one roof. Where we are building a new set of great memories and friends.
I look forward to future visits to Austin to see the people I love there, but you just can’t beat coming back home.
Doug jokes that home for me is where my favorite pillow Jed (yes, I named my pillow) and my wonderful bed is. As long as I have them, I can call anywhere home.
True, I love Jed and Bed, but the minute we got back to Edmond and carried our sleeping beauties up to their rooms, I took that deep calming “home” breath.
In and out.
I knew it would come.
Then, I jumped into my bed and hugged Jed with tight arms.
Ahhh…Home.
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