Intensive Train-ing. ;-)

I'm a collector.
I have that bone in my brain that says that if a thing is good, more of it would be better!

And of course, you know I'm all about documenting my life and my kids and my family and my friends.

I'm the one who agonizes over which photos to frame and put in albums and which to store. I have drawers full of video tapes from weddings and Christmas and summer days and performances. So much to document, so little time!

So when I receive videos and pictures on my phone from people I love, it's like two worlds colliding.

"I must save this," says the collector. 
"I must somehow document this moment," says the historian.

What to do?

In this case, these are videos sent to my phone from my great friend, Pastor Gene. I've written before about how the train thwarts his progress every day. What I love is that he still sends me the Train Report practically every day. And what he doesn't know is that I collect those videos and I upload them to youtube.

I do this, so that today, on his birthday, I can document this fun little tradition that we have. We've been documenting and sharing the train tradition for awhile now.

See? Collect and Document.

Here's Pastor Gene and his Hanford train:

See? I think that was about a year ago.
Here's another:

And one more:

I have dozens of those and they make me happy every single time.I'm not going to share my entire train collection with you today. These are just the highlights of a video text I receive every single day, which I value and cherish. There are dozens of others. These are my favorites.

This next one, he actually coaxes his granddaughter, CJ to greet all of us Darbys. It was a magical moment.

See? I collect these. Moments of love and of joy and to me it's pure comedy.

So thank you, Gene. For sharing your every day frustrations and triumphs, the good, the bad and the small town life. We love spending a tiny bit of our day with our good friends, and that ridiculous Hanford train!

Thanks for sharing so much of yourself. You are God's Gift to us. And we love you very much.

Happy Birthay, Gene, our friend.