London in Oklahoma, Part 2: Casa Cooper

For the second half of our Oklahoma vacation we stayed with London's Mimi and Papa. Mimi had a birthday while we were there, and London got in on some birthday cake.


Naturally where there are grandparents there is going to some spoiling of the little man. London picked up a couple of new trains on this trip, Iron Burt and Iron 'Arry. I am always amazed at the number of locomotives that the Island of Sodor supports, and even more amazed at how many of them have twins. A more cynical person might suspect that some of the characters were introduced purely in the quest for filthy lucre.

Nah!


London also got an engineer's cap. Here he's chatting with Papa about his new trains.


London got to see all three of his great-grandparents this trip, too: Grandma Onie and Grandpa Bud (Mimi's parents), and Grandma Cooper (Papa's mom). Here London is helping Grandma Onie with something--or possibly unhelping. Sometimes it's a fine line. You can also see that, no matter how many other engines arrive, Thomas is never far off.


London relaxes on the sofa with Grandpa Bud. I remembered to take the camera this time, but I didn't get any pictures of Grandma Cooper.


London also got some University of Oklahoma duds. Casa Cooper is a house divided; Papa is an OSU alum and Mimi went to OU for part of her education. A similar situation holds at the Wedel homestead: Todd and I went to OU and Ryan went to OSU. Normally we all get along pretty well, but Todd and I were scandalized when Mom and Dad hung a huge orange OSU sign on the front porch for a few years. I don't know if it's still up or not. I didn't notice it on this trip but it's possible that my brain simply blocked out the offending item.

The best thing that London said on the trip to Oklahoma has a bit of a backstory. London was a little confused about what San Diego refers to. When we got to town we went to the conference hotel, and London kept saying, "San Diego!" He thought that the hotel itself was San Diego. So we'd be at the zoo or one of the museums and he'd say, "I want to go back to San Diego." (Or if it was the train museum, he'd say, "I don't want to go back to San Diego.") We thought it was pretty funny but we didn't give it any thought after we came home.

Then on our last day in Oklahoma Mimi was driving us to the airport on Meridian in Oklahoma City. We were going past hotel row and London saw a big hotel with wrap-around external balconies like the conferenc hotel we'd stayed in, and he pointed and shouted, "There's San Diego!"