Has Christmas Come?

Yesterday we put up our tree and a few other decorations. Blanden thinks it's fun to have it in his playroom. We've lost one ornament so far, but otherwise he's doing pretty well with it.

Little Ellis just takes it all in.

When Blanden was born, good family friends gave him a wooden train set, which I tucked away in his closet to save for future use. I kind of forgot about it, not realizing that the "future" might be here -- until Blanden had great fun playing with Uncle Andrew's childhood wooden train set over Thanksgiving. So I pulled it out and we set it up when we got home.

Now, all of a sudden, Blanden (and Ellis -- as the Thomas pieces belong to him too) have a lot of trains! Ed had begun collecting a Christmas train set for the boys. But rather than put it around the tree, we combined the pieces and set the whole thing up on the train table. Blanden has been playing with it for HOURS. It's the only thing he has wanted to do since it went up yesterday afternoon. We even let him eat his macaroni-and-cheese at the train table last night, "for a special treat," so that he could take bites in between runs.

You would think that Christmas has already come!