Gingerbread Houses!!

We did the annual making of the gingerbread houses!  Decorative candies are a bit harder to obtain over here, but we found some stuff and made do.  It was a crazy chaos and the frosting took forever to solidify, so there was a little trouble there.  But I think much fun was had by all.

She's got her side up!  Just waiting for the frosting to dry enough to support the roof.

Rylee had a lot of trouble keeping her sides straight and I think her house toppled a few times.

Delaney had fun decorating her yard while waiting on the frosting.

Yep, its coming along nicely!

The lighting was dreadful here, and Callie did not want pictures anyway.

Josh was meticulous and careful. 

Callie was great about helping Rylee, and she also did a great job on her own house.

Marian just quietly got to work and let her creativity have free rein.

This kid let her creativity get a little out of control!

And she is quite pleased with herself about it!

This is the hot mess she produced.  Note that it is a horror house as well as a gingerbread house.

Aaaannnnd, here's the other side.

Josh worked hard.

And was pleased with his more minimalist result.

Isn't is great?!!

Rylee thought she was done.

And then decided she wanted more "snow" on top.

And I kind of have no explanation for this. Except maybe more parental supervision was necessary.

This cutie finished her house.

The shingles are made from leftover Halloween Three Musketeers bars. Quite clever, no?

The lineup of finished products.  

And again from another angle.

Wrapping paper shenanigans

One of the big fundraising opportunities here is to gift wrap.  Starting on Black Friday and going till Christmas, organizations can sign up to wrap stuff in front of the Exchange.  The Exchange supplies the table and paper, you just have to bring scissors, ribbon and tape.  Our PTO signed up for the allotted 6 days and then kept being asked if we wanted more days because no one had signed up fo them.  It is decent money, but it is a time consuming job!  9am to 8pm.

I spent a lot of hours doing it, and I do like it.  I like wrapping presents and I like the interactions.  I also very much enjoyed getting to wrap a bunch of white elephant gifts for young Marines.  I wrapped a roll of bubble wrap.  I wrapped a gift in 7 different kinds of paper.  I completely impressed one guy when I suggested wrapping rocks to add to his large box to throw off the recipient.

Anyway, the girls accompanied me a few times.  Mostly they ran amok in the store, and sometimes they hung out with me.  But this night they were completely bonkers, and their friends stopped by and mayhem ensued.  Someone decided they needed to make wrapping paper his and the challenge was on. The kid in the pictures that is not mine is Maggie, Rylee's friend.

Reindeer Romp and Jingle Jog

The PTO that I got roped into being on the board of, held a 5k.  Well, it was a Reindeer Romp and Jingle Jog.  So you could romp a 5k or jog a 1k.  It was a hot mess to get put together, but it was much more successful than I dreamed it would be.  Not sure it actually made money, but we didn't lose any money and it went shockingly well for the amount of organization there was.

I did sign all the kids up to participate.  Dogs were also invited, which thrilled Callie to no end. The girls did the 1k and Josh and Dan ran the 5k.  The stockings I made were the prizes for the top finishers and were filled with Christmas goodies.  They seemed to be a hit.

My lovely ladies, off and running!

There goes Dan!  He came in second place.

Josh did a great job too.

Stuff that happened

Levi was making us laugh.  He just lay there to eat his food.  Silly dog!

I don't know that I mentioned that I managed to volunteer myself to make 9 stockings for the PTO sponsored 5k run on Dec 8.  I made them with Kimonos and this is what they looked like.  The first two done!

Marian needed to transcribe a Mexican recipe and bring in the product for Spanish class.  We found this and tried it out. Oh my goodness! SO delicious!  I do love horchata, and this was the way I like it.  I may have made it three times in three days.....

I have been quite un-gruntled that winter has not come.  Heck, FALL has not arrived.  80 degrees outside, in December?!

Aack!  And then it got worse!  I should not have my AC running in December.

Callie had a band concert.  I did not get any good photos.  You can barely see the top of her face in the middle here.  She did a great job and I was really proud of her!

I left the Branch Christmas party early to go see Josh's play.  I thought the expressway would be the way to go, since it should be the fastest way home.  alas, twas not.  As soon as I got on, traffic backed up.  I checked my maps to see what it said, an dI saw this. And sadly, it was accurate.  It did take ma an hour and 20 minutes to traverse 4.5 km.  Not even miles!  Kilometers!  Less than 3 miles took me over an hour.  I was so mad.  And I missed the play.

But hey!  Josh was in the school Play!  They performed "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" and were amazing.  Josh played the dad.

Dan went to see the Saturday matinee on Dec. 8 with half the girls and I went to the 7pm showing with the other half.  He was fantastic.

All 9 stockings got done!

The spider that came to visit.

One cute dog.

A silly selfie with Rylee.

New Beginnings

The YW had their New Beginnings and Callie somehow was in charge.  She was all over it, getting things put together and following up to make sure stuff got done.  She did a great job!  Each of the Beehives spoke about a woman in history who embodied one of the values, and there were signs around the room of more women in history and the neat stuff they had done.  There was tasty refreshments.  It was a great program, and it was short and simple.  The YW president gave an awesome short talk at the end that really hit home to me, and I quite enjoyed the whole thing.  Here are some photos of Marian and Callie speaking about their person.