Friday, December 31, 2010
A plague on the gingerbread house
Mr. 5 really wanted to make a gingerbread house so I found a recipe on the internet a few days before Christmas and told him we could do one step each night to make the house before Christmas Day (when he wanted to eat it - I think that may have been his sole motivation). It was an utter and total disaster start to finish.
Day 1: We of course do not have all the ingredients including molasses (which we borrowed from our lovely neighbors) and ginger (which I tried to make by crushing dried whole ginger). The dough was okay but didn't seem quite the right consistency - refrigerate overnight the recipe said. Okay, that will fix it I'm sure.
Day 2: No, actually dough much worse than before. It is dry and crumbly and impossible to roll out. So I got a bowl of water and tried to rehydrate the dough little by little which made it sticky and messy. We had misplaced the template Daddy had made the night before so we tried to just wing it which was again less than successful. All the while, Mr. 1 was desparately trying to help. By the end we had some pieces that we hoped would work.
Day 3: The final straw came when we tried to assemble our house. The first batch of Royal Icing was too thin so I made a second batch that was thicker but just wouldn't hold the house up. After 4 or 5 collapses, we tried buttressing with legos and this seemed to work. We even added a few decorations with plans to finish up later. The boys went outside for some sledding and when we came back in the house was a pile of rubble and I was done.
I told the boys they could each eat a piece and I unceremoniously dumped the rest in the trash. Next year I think I'll try a kit...
Day 1: We of course do not have all the ingredients including molasses (which we borrowed from our lovely neighbors) and ginger (which I tried to make by crushing dried whole ginger). The dough was okay but didn't seem quite the right consistency - refrigerate overnight the recipe said. Okay, that will fix it I'm sure.
Day 2: No, actually dough much worse than before. It is dry and crumbly and impossible to roll out. So I got a bowl of water and tried to rehydrate the dough little by little which made it sticky and messy. We had misplaced the template Daddy had made the night before so we tried to just wing it which was again less than successful. All the while, Mr. 1 was desparately trying to help. By the end we had some pieces that we hoped would work.
Day 3: The final straw came when we tried to assemble our house. The first batch of Royal Icing was too thin so I made a second batch that was thicker but just wouldn't hold the house up. After 4 or 5 collapses, we tried buttressing with legos and this seemed to work. We even added a few decorations with plans to finish up later. The boys went outside for some sledding and when we came back in the house was a pile of rubble and I was done.
I told the boys they could each eat a piece and I unceremoniously dumped the rest in the trash. Next year I think I'll try a kit...
Christmas surprise
This Christmas I came up with the insane idea to surprise the kids by replacing their old bunk beds and crib with 2 new sets of bunk beds complete with tents, new reading lights, and new covers. Of course, the kids sleep in these beds so the only way to pull it off was to wait until the kids were asleep on Christmas Eve, move them downstairs, take apart the old furniture, assemble the new, and then move the kids back up. So simple right?
Not so simple but a great surprise. Luckily Nana and Papa arrived Christmas Eve after church and were willing to humor us in our insanity. Thanks to them we were able to move the kids back up at a reasonable 3am rather than just pulling an all-nighter which is what would of happened if we had been on our own.
When we carried Mr. 5 upstairs he woke up enough to look around as he was put in his new top bunk - "I think I know what the surprise is," he told us. The other 2 slept through the transfer.
Mr. 7 was up at 6:04am (we had specified the night before that no one was to be awake before 6am) and thought it was a pretty good surprise and Mr. 5 was super excited but the best reaction was Mr. 1. Up until that night he had been in a crib and had never really had any space to call his own. He spent the morning opening a present and then carrying it to his bed to look at, read, or play with. He LOVES his bed. And other than one rough night where we had to put Mr. 1 back to bed many many times including fetching him down from the top bunk, he's gone to bed happily and stayed there.
BEFORE
AFTER
Not so simple but a great surprise. Luckily Nana and Papa arrived Christmas Eve after church and were willing to humor us in our insanity. Thanks to them we were able to move the kids back up at a reasonable 3am rather than just pulling an all-nighter which is what would of happened if we had been on our own.
When we carried Mr. 5 upstairs he woke up enough to look around as he was put in his new top bunk - "I think I know what the surprise is," he told us. The other 2 slept through the transfer.
Mr. 7 was up at 6:04am (we had specified the night before that no one was to be awake before 6am) and thought it was a pretty good surprise and Mr. 5 was super excited but the best reaction was Mr. 1. Up until that night he had been in a crib and had never really had any space to call his own. He spent the morning opening a present and then carrying it to his bed to look at, read, or play with. He LOVES his bed. And other than one rough night where we had to put Mr. 1 back to bed many many times including fetching him down from the top bunk, he's gone to bed happily and stayed there.
BEFORE
AFTER
Monday, December 20, 2010
First snow
Tonight I walked home through the first snow - a magical time that I try to remember when we're shoveling snow in March and April. When I walked through the door Mr. 5 asked if he could go out in it after dinner. Given that I'd just spent the last 15 minutes thinking how magical it was, I agreed even though it was already late and there were carpets to steamclean (see early post on the necessity of the quarantine). So after dinner I found snow pants and boots for everyone (giving Mr. 1 time to dump the entire container of fish flakes in the tank) and we suited up and headed out. Mr. 1 was very happy to be carried around in it but not too keen on walking in it. And he really was unsure what to do when it would not come off of his mitten. He kept showing me his mitten and saying "oh no mitten". I think they'll be sledding and tromping in the morning for the boys. As for me, I have a journal club to give and consults to see so I'll have to savor the magical walk to work in the morning.
Decorating the tree
Everyone helped and the bottom half of the tree was beautiful (we helped the top half after bedtime).
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