W-I-N-T-E-R !!

YEEEEEEEESSS! I have made the leap in my blog from Fall to Winter. Fantastic. :-)

This picture was taken in early December, and you'll notice - Ben is ready to go outside...but there is NO COAT. I can't tell you how happy I was to have a longer Fall this year. I would hang onto a 50 degree Winter all season long if I could. (Btw, he's quite the picture poser these days, isn't he?)

As is Pandrea tradition, our tree was up the weekend after Thanksgiving. Ben was especially taken with decking the tree out with ornaments this year. Crazy excited about it. We turned up the Christmas tuneage (which Xavier LOVED) and let him go to town. An hour later, the bottom 1/3 of our tree was heavy with doodads, and Ben was very pleased with himself. We told him they needed to be spread out, so Nick lifted him so he could reach higher spots when redistributing the 313 ornaments he had put in 5 square feet of tree.

And then the moaning about "the Christmas train" began. "Now we nneeeeed the Christmas train." We ran out of time to put it up that night, and everyday thereafter, we heard about it. Its sort of a pain to put up, and we knew that it wouldn't really fit around where we put the tree this year, so I was avoiding it.

On a day I was being bombarded with begging, I told Ben, "Listen, your dad's not here. And the box is too big and heavy for me to carry up from the basement by myself. We'll have to wait." That smartiepants looked at me and said, "Well, duh, Mom. You and I can just open the box and carry it up piece by piece."

Huh.

Dangit! My kid is getting smart! Last year that would have sailed by and he would have accepted my explanation as gold.

He did accept my alternative excuse though, because it was true...I had no idea how the train track would fit around our tree...So he decided to use his Geotrax set to temporarily. Again, smart, clever child :-)