The Castle

As a follow-up to my previous post Santa, many people have asked if we found the castle Mikie wanted. The simple answer, yes. However, after getting over the hurdle of finding and purchasing the castle, we found a million other problems. . .

The first, the assembled dimensions of the castle weren't listed on the Toys 'R Us website. After getting the castle, we realized it was much larger than the original castle. . . quite possibly too large to fit on the train table we have.

Mike being a) male and b) and engineer, he was convinced that he could build a new train table that would fit the new castle, and have more storage for all of the train tracks we haven't been able to effectively house in the existing train table. And, try as I might to convince him that the materials plus labor would cost MORE than buying a new table, he was determined to build a table himself.

Until Saturday, when, after driving to Home Depot, he realized that the materials alone were going to run nearly $200. . .

So, I went on-line with the intention to purchase a new train table. However, we were both concerned that the new table wasn't much larger than the existing table (although it was nicer quality and had more storage). Before shelling out $210 + shipping on another train table, we decided to assemble the castle and verify that it was in fact too big.

Mikie went to bed at 8pm as usual. At 9:30, after we were sure that Mikie was asleep, Mike went upstairs to retrieve the castle.

As soon as Mike came out of the bedroom with the castle (which he didn't leave in the garbage bag I wrapped it in), Mikie popped his head out of his door to see what was going on. . . who was that castle for. . . and, could he see the picture on the box?

Luckily, Mike quickly came up with his favorite excuse: "It's a present for Arcangelo". This was enough to convince Mikie it wasn't his castle from Santa, but didn't dissuade him from wanting to see the picture. . .

Somehow, Mike convinced Mikie to return to bed without looking at the box or asking more questions. And, we assembled the castle. It does overhang the edge of the table by 1/4" on one side, but Mike plans on grabbing the jigsaw and trimming it slightly if Mikie is bothered by it.

And so continues the web of deception and lies to keep the mystery of Christmas alive. Hopefully he will forget this incident when Arcangelo opens a rocket ship, not a castle, on Christmas Eve. . .

Love, The Trahans