Samantha received a Shopkins gingerbread house for her birthday -- Shopkins are all the rage right now (small, collectible, plastic items), so Steve helped the girls construct it before Christmas and then they decorated it.
It should be noted that I employed the engineer of the family for this task, as my gingerbread house that I helped the girls with last year was not very sturdy.
The finished product:
********************
During the gingerbread house project, Jack played on the computer for a bit. Yes, this little man knows how to navigate a computer mouse with ease.
********************
Speaking of gingerbread houses, we stopped at Wendy's for lunch one day and the nice lady behind the counter gave the kids these cardboard gingerbread houses to construct at home. I had little faith that they would be anything "substantial," but I was clearly wrong. We put them together one night after baths and then decorated them with stickers. What a fun family activity!
********************
Christmas Catherine, our Elf on the Shelf, was busy this year.
She started making snowflakes out of coffee filters late one night and then left a note asking the kids if they would help her make some more.
Oh, yes. They definitely wanted to help!
Showing off their creations on the back door:
Christmas Catherine got into some leftover popcorn that the kids had left out on the counter and strung some of it together to decorate one of the Christmas trees that was part of a decoration in the living room.
On another night, while wearing her pajamas, she got tangled up in some lights.
One morning, the kids found her sitting on the coffee table with a note asking if they would help her put together a puzzle.
When it was all put together, it read: "Lapinski Family, I'm Back! ~ Catherine."
Jack found her early one morning, hiding in the Christmas tree.
She had stolen a camo hankerchief from Steve's dresser drawer and covered her face in camo face-paint. Apparently, the camo wasn't working that well ... since Jack found her right away!
I told the girls that we would need to make some cookies for Santa the next day, and Christmas Catherine must have heard them talking when they wondered out loud what Santa's favorite kinds of cookies were.
Luckily, Santa's "favorite" cookies just happened to be the ones that I had already planned to make!
********************
That day, the kids helped me make the cookies:
And then the next afternoon, I surprised Samantha and Sophia by letting them skip their naps so that they could help frost the cookies.
Many times over the course of the afternoon, I found myself reminding Sophia that "less is more" when it comes to sprinkles, but that girl will ALWAYS be my "queen of embellishments." In her mind, you can never have too much sparkle -- whether that be glitter or sprinkles.
(We did leave a few cookies without frosting and sprinkles for those people that don't share the same motto in life that Sophia does).
********************
After the Christmas Play-Date, the kids took a front row seat on the coffee table to finish watching The Grinch movie. (The coffee table had been moved earlier to make room for all of the friends that we had invited over).
*********************
All I have to say is "bake" and Sophia is right there, ready to go. I never have to ask her twice.
********************
We consumed a lot of hot chocolate this season. We even learned that Jack likes it too!
********************
Jack received a sleeping bag for Christmas this year so the kids were excited to have a movie and popcorn night on the living room floor. Jack isn't quite ready to sit through a full movie yet (his attention span is not that well-perfected), but he did pretty well.
No comments:
Post a Comment