Christmas At Gram's

After our long drive, we were ready for a good dinner. We loaded up gifts in my parent's minivan and headed to Gram's house. Andrew was very excited to see his second cousin Mikey, who is just 10 months younger. They immediately started playing together and didn't stop for three hours.

Although I love the home-cooked food, one of my favorites when I'm home is Italian Sausage from Capri's restaurant. Once again, I was not disappointed. Dinner was great, but we couldn't get Andrew to stop playing long enough to eat. But then, who could blame him. He spent most of the day in the car and he needed to burn off some excess energy. When he finally started getting hungry, he found the cookie plate and asked which cookies were safe for him to eat (he has a serious peanut allergy). We divided the plate into groups of safe and unsafe cookies. He grabbed a snickerdoodle and returned to playing with Mikey.

Then came present time. Both Andrew and Mikey got a present to tear into. Then Mikey got another and another. It didn't take long for Andrew to notice this fact. I guess at his age, the quantity is the most important thing.

After a while, we noticed that Andrew and Mikey were downstairs and it was far too quiet. I went down to check on them and found a large Thomas layout on the floor. Andrew and I quickly started making improvements. Before long, we had created a bypass loop around the outside and started pulling in other toys as props. In one section, we had the alligator swamps. In another, we had a pride of lions eyeing the trains as they passed. The herd of elephants was causing derailments on another section of track. And who knows what the zebras, giraffes, and dinosaurs were up to.

Bedtime for Mikey finally arrived and the fun was put on hold for the evening. My wish for Andrew is that he will find some friends his age to play with in Florida. It's so good for him to have this time with Mikey.