Another Snow Day

Winter is not officially here and yet my kids are spending their second consecutive day home from school thanks to the wonderful snow storm that hit our area on Sunday.

It was fine on Monday.  I was able to tend to my cleaning and laundry without much issue.  And no, I didn't let the kids sit in front of the television all day long.  Sadly though, it was too cold outside to let them go out and play in the snow.

Owen still had preschool in the afternoon and I knew I could go ahead and run my errands with Jenna and Evan along while Owen was at school.  In fact, I was able to take advantage of having Jenna with me and purchase her contribution to the gift exchange at her class Christmas party next week.

Around about 10:30 or so on Monday though, they were getting a little restless.  I decided to break out the gingerbread houses.  I had bought a kit on clearance at Target last year during the after-Christmas sales and then I found another really cute one this year at Trader Joe's.  My three went to work creating a cute little Christmas village.

Here is how the project unfolded...

The lighting in our basement rec room is less than stellar.

Future architects and engineers at work.

"It's okay if I sample the supplies, right?!"

Piece-by-piece, it began to come together.

A more basic design for Evan.

The more cement, err, the more icing,
the greater the likelihood of your house staying together.

And now, for the colorful decorations!

When it came time to decorate their houses, it was interesting, but not surprising to see each child's perspective unfold.  Jenna adopted the "less is more" attitude which, personally, I hope she maintains when she begins wearing make-up someday.  Then there's Evan, who kept things fairly balanced out.  And then we have Owen.  I expected as much from his "too much is never enough" decorating skills.  "Just one more!" became his mantra with the gumdrops and sprinkles and whatever those other little colorful things were that came with the kit.

Watch that your roof doesn't cave in!

Jenna is all smiles with her happy little house!



Owen is very proud of his construction work!



A sweet little Christmas village.

The kids had a great time with this little project and I admit that I had a fun time watching and helping (just a little) too.  This was something I had planned to have the kids do during their Christmas break from school.  Looks like I'll have to pull a different trick out of my sleeve when the "I'm bored's" kick in!