Hot glue and sprinkles

I’m definitely playing catch-up with this blog… I’ve been busy with other things or I haven’t had any blog inspiration (everything I think of to blog about seems completely uninteresting, self-absorbed or b-o-r-i-n-g.

Life, on the other hand, has been anything but boring.

This last week we had my brother’s girls stay with us for three days while their parents  went away.  These two are so fun to have and they come expecting to keep busy – no lying around reading ‘The Grinch’ or staring at the Christmas tree.  I know it’s partly my own fault for planning crafts and baking projects whenever they come.  I admit to wanting to be a fun auntie.  Plus if there is lots to do, we don’t hear “What are we going to do now?” too often.

So I bought one of those gingerbread kits for the first time, thinking this would surely take up HOURS of time.  I’d been warned by an experienced gingerbread kit user that the frosting that serves as the glue to hold the walls together may not dry very quickly but that a hairdryer would speed things up.  Looking to avoid that hassle, we got out the glue guns instead, reminding the girls NOT to eat their village.

I was nervous about burned fingers with hot glue.

The five buildings in the village went together pretty quickly and then the fun part began!

I don’t have any pictures of the part where the entire bottle of sprinkles was emptied onto the roof of the chalet (as well as onto the table and floor).   Or of the completed village for that matter.  I seem to remember this same sort of thing happening another time.

But it must have been completed in some kind of record time because not long after we started I heard a sweet little voice say “Now what are we going to do, Becky?”

It almost made me wish I hadn't purchased a 'kit' and that we had made gingerbread ourselves and cut out the individual pieces with a knife, which would have taken a LOT more time.  And then I slapped myself on both cheeks and moved on to the next activity. 

We made pizza (our bread machine came out for this).

Kate asked Jeff if she could use his camera…

And we ate pizza and watched part of Elf and it was bedtime - the first night.

The next morning we had a scare got excited because snow had fallen during the night and we had to check to see if school had been cancelled! 

For all of you who are used to snowdrifts in winter, we live in Oregon – it doesn’t take much to pretty much shut the whole city down.  But to the disappointment of the girls and the secret relief of the aunt and uncle who knew they didn’t have enough activities up their sleeves for an entire day of busy-ness, off to school they went.

I don’t have photos of the rest of the week.  We did some baking after school and made some snowflakes and planted some paperwhites to take home.  I think we played ‘Blurt’ about 800 times, did homework, watched some Christmas shows and played cards. 

And it was good!