Setting up the Christmas village

Emma, I keep telling you: The train can't go through the gingerbread house's back yard. It'll ruin property values.

Christmas card outtakes

Posting this because it may actually be cuter than the shot we ended up using...

The proper way to ship a toddler

Make sure you use plenty of packing peanuts before closing the box. Those things are very fragile.

Don't mess with grandmom

Geez, you make one joke about sewing and she flattens you with one punch. 

(OK, OK, she was measuring me for a school play costume. But I thought it was funny.)

Thanksgiving recap

Before Thanksgiving dinner:

After stuffing yourself at Thanksgiving dinner: 

How to handle leaves

First you rake them.

And then...

And then...

Train trip

We got a chance to catch up with Tyler at the Baltimore Train museum last weekend. Good news, they still have giant trains there!

This was Emma's first chance to ride on a train, so we had to ease her in slowly. I has her watch the model trains for a while so she understood what we were getting into. 

The train ride through Baltimore was awesome, even though the train didn't go as fast as I wanted it to. But it was super hero day at the museum, and Dad said the train wasn't even running. It was just being pushed by Superman. So I guess that explains it. 

Iron Man and a bunch of other super heroes were on board. I gave him a high five, but I really didn't want to shake hands with Poison Ivy when she stopped by. It just seemed like a bad idea. 

Afterwards, Tyler and I showed Emma more model trains to explain to her everything that happened. She tried to climb in a few, but she's really not that small anymore.