This post is for Kate, who singlehandedly saved my Christmas caramels by sending me some wrappers from Orson Gigi and asked me about the g-bread post.
This year the Wait girls were reunited for our annual tradition. (Of course, none of us are actually Wait girls anymore.) I think it has been eight years since I made a g-bread house with my mom. First she was in Alaska and then I was in Iowa. Naturally, now that I am out west again, she and Sara came south to rekindle our seasonal affair with molasses and home-made hard-tack candy.
We introduced the art of the g-bread house to my sister in law, Tifiny. She loved it so much, she said she was in it for life.
Here is the house right before we melted the windows.
Here is my finished product. Notice the palm tree in the front to match my actual palm trees.
Here's what it looked like today after it succumbed to the wrath of an air soft gun.
The kids cleaned up the whole mess. I didn't even have to get involved.
I made the conscious choice to enjoy December this year. I didn't over commit myself, I found ways to serve my community, and I adjusted my expectations for the holiday.
We moved into our new house the week before Thanksgiving.
I felt like it was a Martha Stewart move because I had all these little elves running around unpacking my things and decorating shelves and hanging pictures. Robert's sister, Karen, is a whiz with a hammer and nails and his mom opens and unpacks boxes like it's a race to the finish. We took possession of the house on a Friday evening and by Saturday afternoon I was in my new kitchen making pumpkin cookies.
I put up a Christmas tree the week after Thanksgiving but I was utterly unmotivated to decorate the thing. A week before Christmas Day, Stella and George were fed up. They dug out our ornaments and put them on the tree and that is why the uppermost 18 inches didn't have anything on them.
I am totally okay with that.
I made peppermint brownies, honey almond bars, caramels and sugar cookies to deliver to a few of our neighbors, basketball coaches and Scout Leaders. The brownies and the almond bars never made it out the door and only the people within walking distance actually received plates.
It's a good thing the other people on my list don't read my blog because I want them to assume I was too busy unpacking after our move to make Christmas goodie plates.
Of course, if we are being totally honest, I know that our little family is barely a blip on the radar for most of the people on my goodie list. Even if I had delivered a plateful of carbohydrates to their door the recipients would have been saying to each other "Who was that?" "I have no idea, but these caramels are good. Hide them from the kids."
My mom, her husband Jim, Scott and his girlfriend, and Eddie spent Christmas with us. I don't know how it could have been a better weekend. We had a smashing good time.
Having an annual family talent show in your Christmas Jammies: It's a Good Thing.
(Give the video a chance. Right before 2:01, Henry prefaced his performance with this description: I will recite an official American document in a dignified manner. Around here, Dignified=shirtless.)
We are in the midst of one of my favorite weeks of the year.
Our days consist of sleeping in, boxes of chocolate, movie marathons, Wii dance-offs and a fridge full of leftover dips and treats. My kids keep begging me to play games with them and I indulge in hours of guilt-free face time.
Am I the only one who feels guilty about just hanging out with my kids? I'm genuinely happy that they actually still WANT to be with me and include me in their lives, but at the same time I'm thinking about all the work that needs to be done that I don't always Enjoy the Moment.
Not this week.
This week, laundry gets done. Sometimes.
Meals are irregular because nobody is very hungry. (See: the fridge full of leftover treats.)
Sometimes we get dressed.
It's the post-Christmas haze and I'm not saying that we haven't had the Traditional Christmas Meltdown or that I haven't been Bursting Out of My Jeans (see: that darn fridge full of leftover treats), but all in all I'm enjoying the week.
