Christmas Visitors

Meet Eugene.  He's one of the visitors who is joining us for Christmas this year.

I have an advent calendar which helps little boys know exactly what day Christmas is.

I had saved this for Ben, who wanted to know if we could put all the numbers on today.  I am a liberal grandmother, but I made him stop at 22.

You are looking at my Christmas present from Papa Ben.  It's my first train set. I had a lot of help playing with it this afternoon.

Earlier this month, I baked quite a selection of treats for my many widowed friends.  I shared just a few with family this afternoon.  You are looking at peanut butter frosting on the cupcake, a 7-layer cookie, which is stunningly delicious, and a decadent brownie.

Ben revisited the train several times this afternoon.

Papa Ben has modified his bird-feeding system.  Ben helped.

The birds wait patiently in the trees while we refill the feeders, as if staring at us will speed things up.

There is no way to say this nicely, but I made everyone walk around the block with me this afternoon.  I'm not sure I can explain the balloon.  It was a remnant from last month's visitors.

Fortunately, we had a great time.

It's been cold, and today was no exception.  Ben found a patch of snow that is a month old.

He insisted on washing off the snow when we came in the house.  The warm water helped.

I had set out all the ingredients for instapot brownies long before Ben came.  He helped me put them together.

He and I caught some fish while they cooked.

Ben has enjoyed becoming reacquainted with my toy closet.  Matt taught me a new word yesterday.  Do you know the plural of octopus?  Because the word is Greek, not Latin, it's octopodes.  To my surprise, Corinne already knew this.

I do know the plural for brownie.  We just had the one, but it cut up nicely.

Before fading off to bed, Ben and I had a magnet-fest in front of the fire.  We built garages for our cars.