Gingerbread Decorating Party

Did I say party? I meant complete chaos, craziness, and was I on crack when I offered my house to do this fun little project? Really, how messy can 11 children (10 of them under the age of 6), enough frosting to mortar my house together, and bags upon bags upon boxes of candy, in my dining room be? MESSY! But totally worth it. The children had an excellent time and they even left a little bit of the candy for the houses, which turned out pretty spectacular, if you ask me...(and if you didn't ask me, then quit reading my blog, cuz it's all about me). Thankfully all of the mothers were laid back and went with the candy induced flow. Kevin, however, sat in the family room, his eye all a twitching. He stayed there because I didn't want him to scare the children. He was having a freak out attack at the amount of sugar and frosting and mess and number of small children and who was going to clean all of this up???!!

A fun time was had by all. Amazingly enough, it was cleaned up in no time at all. It's whatcha call or.gan.i.za.tion, my friends. All of the leftover candy went into one tiny ziplock bag, the freezer paper that I had taped to the table beforehand was pulled up and thrown away, and the floor was vacuumed. Presto, snap, boom.....the room is clean and Kevin stopped twitching.

Now, this is my kind of party!

Could there be any more candy in this picture?

Natalie and Ellie collaberating on Ellie's house. (There is only 2 weeks difference in age with these two ragamuffins.) We are blessed to have them as our backyard, thru the trees neighbors here on the compound. I guess that we are also blessed cuz they're related to us and have to live on the compound too.

My friend Ann, whom we refer to as Dr. Ann D.D.S. She twitched a little bit at the sight of all of the candy and such, but she got over it when she realized that she was all of our dentist. Then she saw her kids college being paid for and the twitching subsided.

The finished products!

One down, Two to go

We did it. We finally broke down and took one of our children skiing. We are officially crazy and broke. And much to our joy and our pocketbooks dismay...Ellie loved it. Skiing is cool and I am really good at it.... so says she.

We had a fabulous time together. Ellie at ski school, Kevin on the slopes, Me napping and shopping and what not. Good times. If you ask Ella what her favorite part of the trip was she will tell you the hot tub and the pool. Yep that's our girl....all about the water sports. Seriously, she couldn't stop talking about the hot tubs...they were outside, my friends....in the cold and snowy outside! She just couldn't get enough of that concept. I, on the other hand, thought that the dry sauna was perfect and warm and dry and indoors.

Ella did 2 days of ski school. We dropped her off at 8:30 and picked her up at 3:30. Do you know how much napping one can do in that amount of time? It was awesome. On the second day Kev thought that he might catch a glimpse of her skiing, so he made his way over from his double black whatevers to the baby bunny green carpets. He tried in vain, looking for a sweet little one in a white coat and brown pants, but much to his dismay, he couldn't find her. Little did he know our budding snow bunny was wearing a brown coat and pink pants that day. I am, I mean, she is a diva. Can't wear the same thing twice! Thankfully the super expensive goggles that Amy lent us went with both outfits. Can you imagine the damage to her(my) psyche if she didn't look cute as a button on the slopes? Fortunately, we were able to see her skiing down the mountain when we went to pick her up. She did a fabulous job! She was first in line...we assume this was because she was the slowest and they didn't want to leave her behind on the slopes. We are so proud of her! Now she wants to bring all of her friends skiing. Probably not going to happen any time soon.

Still smiling after her first day!

Mommy and Ellie

Coming down the mountain!

Skiing with the cool kids....

Ellie and the most patient instructor, Liz.

I did get a little video of her at the end. You know, after she was down the mountain and standing in front of us and I finally remembered that my camera also shoots video. If I knew how to post video, I would because it is a fine work of craftmanship, I tell you. A rivoting 47 seconds of Ellie skate-skiing into the ski school area and some ladies head that kept getting in my way. The nerve of some people!

I shudder to think about ski trips with the boys. It makes my head hurt, so I think that I won't worry about it until the time comes. Life is good and I should just enjoy it as it comes....Right?

They just keep growing!

They grow up so fast. Lately the boys have been hating their high chairs and have been wanting to eat anywhere but there. Since we didn't plan on 3 children, the island in our kitchen is not big enough to accommodate 3 chairs. This is where we eat most of our meals....you know quality family together time...Kev and Ellie at the island, the boys in their highchairs along the kitchen wall and me standing somewhere trying to get my food while it's still luke warm. We do try to sit together at the dining room table when we can, unfortunately our schedules seem to be all over the place lately and it's just a job to get everyone fed. Anyway...we do have a new top for our island ordered. It will be big enough for three chairs with the option of an extra when we need it. The only problem is that the guy that is doing our pool is doing the counter top as well. Soooo, we will probably have that done when the boys reach Jr High.


Here are a couple of pics of our big boys acting like big boys.

Ellie, the little stinker, thinks that she is a big girl too! She recently got to help Kevin put the Christmas lights on the house. I may have had a moment of weakness when I allowed this and then of course had to take pictures of it. She said that she had fun, but was upset with her father when he made her stop dancing and jumping on the roof. I guess that big girls don't know the meaning of "Stand right here and DON'T MOVE!" She had a fun time helping her dad and is very proud of her work. I'll have to take a pic of that some night.

And then there are the days when I wish that they/he, would just act their/his age. Kevin is such a little boys sometimes. The other night he went out to burn some trash. He comes running in the house, giggling like a little girl, "Go look out the back window!" I, the obedient wife, do as told and see this.....

a huge raging fire from the small amount of trash that was to be burned. I asked the little pyro what was going on and he giggled again "I built a really cool, big fire." He had found some cardboard and started it on fire as well. The cardboard was really tall and he couldn't fit the cover on the barrel to keep the burning trash from blowing all over and starting the house, trees, shop on fire. I lost interest in his little show and went back to my child care giving, until I heard him say "Oh crap, the grass is on fire!" The big cardboard piece fell out and started the grass aflame. Thankfully, nothing became of the grass blaze and all the excitement settled down. For the record I did not take the picture of the fire. That was all Kevin's doing.....his I am 15 years old, I love fire, and want proof of my big fire doing.