Visions of sugarplums...

Well, I had good intentions...

Yesterday, Aili and I braved the 15+cm that fell throughout the night and headed into the city for a day of shopping with my sister, Teresa. The roads were TERRIBLE!! There was no rhyme nor reason to how the roads were ploughed (plowed?) - some main streets weren't but some of the lesser-traveled side streets were!! Must have been one of the snowplough (snowplow?) operator's streets! ;)

I didn't get much accomplished - a few more Christmas gifts crossed off my lists but at the cost of an increasingly tantrum-proned child. I finally gave up around 3pm and headed back home to pick up Connor from latchkey - of course, Aili fell promptly asleep! So she was quite grumpy when we got home.

After dinner, she went right to bed (of course, not without a fight though!) I went in to say goodnight and felt an overwhelming need to lay down! I laid down on my bed for a minute... and woke up at 10:30pm - contacts still in, teeth unbrushed... ugh! I got up with the intentions of heading downstairs to get a few hours of work in but still felt so sleepy so I laid my head down for a minute... (do you see a pattern here?)

At 6:00am this morning, I heard my cell phone alarm go off and hopped out of bed! Of course, my contacts were stuck to my corneas from sleeping in them... but it was nice to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when the kids got up! ;)

At any rate, that's my excuse for not posting the gingerbread house photos, as promised!

It started off fairly cooperatively... despite some sibling rivalry over who would get to put the peppermint candies on the roof. We started off building the sides:
Next came the roof, which was tricky, as the icing wasn't nearly as fast drying as we had planned. Here, Connor demonstrates his one-finger technique to helping me hold the roof in place...By the way, that is NOT some abnormal growth on my index finger... merely left over icing that I had not licked off (because I had just admonished the kids 3 times for licking their fingers - and had sent them to the bathroom to wash their hands each time...)

Okay, so far, so good... no casualties and the kids are still on speaking terms...
Now comes the fun part: the candy decorating!

After a few power struggles over the gumdrops (kids) and one emotional outburst (me), we ended up with a pretty decent looking house!
Even if the icing did slide off and cause an avalanche on Mr. Gingerbread...
I managed to snap a potential Christmas card photo, too... Not that I'll get around to sending them in time for Christmas though... Maybe Valentine's Day...

And lastly, because a day without laughter is like a day without sunshine, I leave you with this, my dancing queen:
I'd like to say that it's AFTER consuming all of the leftover candies from the house, resulting in a crazed sugar epileptic-type attack, but no... Just my crazy kid, showing us her moves...


Why, you ask, did I convert it to B&W??? To save you from the horror of a 4 year old, picking out her own clothes:


I used The Pioneer Woman's action, The Seventies, since it seems to fit the era! Please note the heinous fashion crime: black socks with white shoes - Yikes!

Crazy kid. Must take after her dad... ;)