Homestead Holiday

 I am still waiting to round up my pictures of my visit with the Rizzos, Cornells and Nickoloffs over Thanksgiving break. However, I can break up the chronology and share some shots of our Thanksgiving Saturday visit to Homestead Gardens in Annapolis. Homestead Gardens, if you haven't been before is a sort of a... garden/craft/holiday store. Whatever, it can out-Christmas all of us to a power of 10. And also, they have a Train. I mean, an old fashioned miniature county's worth of miniature infrastructure.

I liked this woodland, Norse-looking Santa print.

ARK full of stuffed animals. The children and I wanted them all!

Miles is very pleased about the large reindeer.

I'm not sure how much Adele could see from down here, but whatever it was was transfixing to her.

  The thing about miniature villages, I have figured out, is that everything looks friendly and manageable when it is tiny. You cannot see the tiny people's problems from this vantage point. You cannot hear what they say to each other. You do not know what they have in their bank accounts or what is in their smiling little heads. And so we can believe in a perfect world, and imagine that if we could just shrink down and get there, we would find our lives had snapped into place and our problems would assume the correct proportion.

It's like Lake Wobegon.

It makes even large corporations look benign and wholesome.

 Did I get too heavy for you? Okay, here's my son in a coin-operated car ride:

See? You're feeling better, aren't you?

 And even better! Here's Adele and Miles sharing a quarter's worth of train ride. Miles holds her protectively and she slowly warms up to it:

Jon says this is her insincere smile. "See folks; I'm having fun (Help me!)!"

"Don't encourage the adults. Now they've left me with this daft fat man. HALP!!"

 The tears began about two seconds later. Miles, you'll notice, never made it to Santa's lap. He has flatly refused Santa-based activities this year. He knows Santa has two names, Santa and Saint Nicholas, but has also observed that when he is called Saint Nicholas, he, Miles, is much less likely to be invited onto his lap and asked personal questions. So he prefers to call him Saint Nicholas. Miles likes to keep his boundaries firm. When I taught him the song, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" Miles wanted it clarified that Santa wasn't actually watching him and that he wouldn't be coming into our house when we weren't expecting him. Smart kid, really.

I am behind in blogging. I accept this. I hope you do, too. :-)