Mommy is a train person, Grandpa is a train person, Daddy sure likes to build track, and we are starting early to create little train girls. This year the girls started their Thomas the Train collection. There has been a layed out track everyday since Christmas with engines running around it.

Robby was chomping at the bit to build track layouts with all of the track, but we thought it would be best to wait for Emily to get used to the toy with just the starter set. Emily has enjoyed talking to the engines and quickly wanted to name the engines that didn’t come with names. She hasn’t mastered all of the rules of trains, like she thinks they can make turns and double back at switches. It is really cute.

After a few days of the simple layout Robby has started building larger track layouts that take up almost the whole floor. Amazingly the girls play with it for a while before destroying it and when it is destroyed it is always Julia’s work. Julia has been imitating the rest of us by running the engines around the track some too. This is going to be one fun toy for a while!

Christmas is always a fun, busy day, and it is so easy to put the camera down and forget to pick it back up. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t get family photos on Christmas and I never got a photo of Emily looking at my camera. This Christmas I guess Emily was the photographer. These are just two photos of the girls from Christmas day and the joy that they shared that day. It was a good and fun day. May all of our Christmases be so merry!

Emily received a kid’s digital camera for Christmas from Uncle Doug and Aunt Saba, and it has been a hit. Somehow she knew immediately what to do with it. She only needed one half lesson on what the buttons were for, and she ran around taking photo after photo. When Robby downloaded them, the total was over 300 that she took the day of Christmas and the day following. It has been interesting to see the photos and reflect upon the fact that this is the world from her eyes. She took photos of people, people taking photos of her, toys, things that were important to her, random things, ceilings, carpets, and many more. Here is a sample of her photos – They aren’t going to win awards, but they are expressions of her perspective and interests.

We are continuing a tradition from Robby’s childhood of hanging an ornament on the advent wreath each of the days of December. Robby has really enjoyed watching Emily pick out the ornaments remembering back to he and his brothers doing the same thing. It was a lot of fun to do with her and Julia enjoyed looking and touching them. We saved a Santa ornament for Christmas Eve and baby Jesus for Christmas day.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas at our house! The other day Emily helped me finish up wrapping a gift for Robby. She picked out three bows to place on the gift and stuck them down. We then hunted for the perfect hiding spot under the tree among the other gifts. When Robby got home, she promptly told him that he had a gift under the tree and tried to take him to the tree to find it. Thank goodness I had the gift in the box before she started helping me or else she would have told him what was in the box too. Emily hasn’t mastered the art of keeping secrets yet!

We had some fun swimming today. The photos aren’t the best, but they were taken with a camera phone at an indoor pool. There is only so much that can be done to help that. The water was so warm it was like bath water. Everyone had a blast and enjoyed the water at their own pace. I dunked Julia once and gave her the opportunity to bob her face into the water which she only did twice. She enjoyed the pool/Mommy time a lot! Emily was a fish in the water. She is confident in her floaties and would kick and swim herself around the pool. We need to work on jumping into the pool and getting her face into the water more, but I couldn’t be more pleased with how well she did today. If we could go back tomorrow, I would – maybe soon!