Steed Christmas

Part of our trip to Michigan involved a stay with Mark's parents near Lansing. Since our last visit, two years ago, Jaxon has been praying EVERY NIGHT to go on an airplane to Michigan. Luckily, we managed to get there this year, because I was beginning to think that he's stop believing in God if it took much longer :)

One of the draws to visit Papa Larry (or just Larry, as Jaxon likes to call him) and Grandma Michele, is that they have a real model train. Jaxon and Asher, and even Finn, were glued to this train and it became quite the popular feature for the visit. The only problem was that they weren't allowed to operate it by themselves, so they ended up with a lot of one-on-one time with Papa Larry.

The first photo is Larry playing chess with Finn. I'm not sure who won, actually . . .

The next two are of the train adventure (note the dining room table was out of comission for our visit. We mostly ate on our laps. And, knowing my mother-in-law, that was quite a sacrifice. She has such beautiful dishes and servingware, she even has a mini set of silver salt and pepper shakers for each place setting. It was really thoughtful of them to make the train the center of our visit.

The last photo is Mark, our kids, and his parents a few moments before we headed out the door. If you look closely, you can see the measuring wall. We made sure to mark our kids' height on the wall before we left.

We loved our trip to visit Mark's parents and can't wait to go again.(Hopefully when we have fewer than two children in diapers, although they are all sleeping through the night and that's a first since we've traveled with children.)