sweet rewards

Zoe made this for her dad.

Welcome 2010 (a little late)

So the new year is here (cute good luck talisman-a gift from a friend with a crafty sister.)

To welcome her in we:

We stayed up late and watched this video.

We went to the Fiesta Bowl Parade. Every year Reed says "We won't do that again for a long time."

We destroyed our gingerbread house.

We hiked telegraph pass on South Mountain.

We went to bed really tired.

The Last of Christmas

I have two boxes of Christmas things to put away.

One is my box for things that I have found since I put everything else away.

The other is the Christmas tree. It is a really big box. I have to clear a path through the garage to put it back in its resting spot until next year.

And I couldn't find packing tape. I broke down and bought another roll.

As I bid adieu to the last of the season there are things that I have not yet recorded, like Christmas.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words I am going to let them do the talking...

Enjoy the show!

What goes up, must come down...

I did some thinking this year about why we destroy gingerbread houses. The memories were not difficult to conjure up. When we lived in Louisville we lived in a rough neighborhood.
We hid in our apartment with the lights out on Halloween.
We would watch neighbors chase each other with roman candles on Independence Day.
Old TV's appeared regularly in the lot across from our apartment.
One day we tried to break an old TV with baseballs.
The TV laughed and threw the baseballs back.
We threw big rocks and took it out Office Space style.
Once the adrenaline is pumping the mind naturally turns to what to destroy next.
The gingerbread house.
A home baked beauty, with candy windows. It did not go down easy. It was fun. A tradition was born.
For 2010
The weapons: Horseshoes, golf clubs, metal pipe.
Location: the Rez side of Pecos park
Mission: destruction
Audience: Phoenix' finest (they just did a drive by)

Gingerbread House #14

Many design entries were submitted for this years gingerbread house extravaganza. Due to lack of time, none of them were accepted and the resident architect wanna-be came up with this. The girls were not sure about it until they realized it looked like Rapunzel's tower. I was not sure about it because it just looked really top heavy. I am sure if this was constructed of anything edible it would have failed, but cardboard and hot clue are powerful building materials and they stood strong under the weight of their sweet load.

Let the decorations begin. It took 18 egg whites and 6 pounds of powdered sugar to attach all the candy. Tanner consumed as much candy as he applied.

My role in the gingerbread house has evolved over the years. In the beginning I was in control of design and decoration. Now that my kids can wield their own decorating bags I play a support role-make frosting and sweep. The more the kids are in control of the decorating the more sweeping and frosting making is required. This is my favorite part of the holidays, can't wait to do it again next year.

Christmas Haiku

Egg Nog in my cup
Family all around me
Happy Holidays

(non-alcoholic of course)

Christmas Magic

I have not posted anything about our holidays. I will. They were great.
The lights and decorations seemed so magical when I put them up.
Last night they just seemed like clutter so...
today I took them all down.
Once they were gone I looked around my house.
What a mess.
I haven't cleaned a bathroom for two weeks, and I have a three year old boy.
My kitchen floor looked like a culinary archive of everything we have eaten the past two weeks (I just spent 45 min scrubbing it.)
Funny, I didn't notice the filth while the decorations were up.
Maybe they are magic.