It was a small Christmas party this year. Mom joined us for dinner. JaMM stayed 3 days. Danita made an insane amount of very good food, including ham, lasagna, and chocolate-bacon muffins. Jiajia brought a very good beef brisket.

All the food was good (and so was the wine), but Mira was the star of the show. It turns out Mira loves to swing. She did very well over Christmas. She was just learning to walk. Before she left, she learned how to push a toy grocery cart, “sproing” the door stops, and climb up to the couch. She was so proud of her climbing ability. We set up boxes to help her. After she got to the couch, she ran over to the arm rest and looked down to see how high she was. She would have climbed up and down more, but structural limitations of one of the boxes put an end to the climbing for the day. The best part of the visit is that Mira let us play with her and hold her without crying. Even when her parents went out to do a little shopping, she didn’t kick up a fuss at all.

We had a lot of rain, but we also had some dry weather. We didn’t want to go indoors to see train gardens and such. Fortunately, the Ellicott City train museum divided their train garden into 8 displays and placed them in store-front windows in historic Ellicott City. It was fun looking at all the displays.