Its a Gingerbread house

A few days back I was wondering through the shops when I stumbled across a gingerbread house making kit. I actually ended up buying this kit..........What was I thinking!

Here I was thinking it would be a simple opportunity to enjoy some relaxing time in the kitchen while I & the kids had some fun decorating this house made of biscuit.

Well, it started like this:

1) Put the kids to bed

2) Quickly make the gingerbread dough.........C'mon Marcia, your too slow, the kids will be up soon!

3) Bake the dough....................Fine, I'm doing okay here !

4) Find somewhere to put the baked Gingerbread house pieces where the kids can't reach them.............First problem!...............They can reach pretty much every corner of the house now!

5) The kids are awake..................Panick!

So here I am with cooling racks spread over the entire house for the next week while I attempt to dry the gingerbread out just so I can construct my house.

1 Week Later

Now the kids are in bed & this time I have my mother here to try & speek things up a bit. I was hoping that we would be able to start & finish decorating this house in a matter of 1 hour. (You can tell I have never done this before)

Anyway, the first hour comes & goes & once again the kids are awake. Now its a case of trying to keep the triplets out of mischeif & putting them in a place where they can view the house being made without being able to reach it!

Well, we managed to fight the kids off for a good half hour before Jasmine ate a chunk out of the roof. Luckily it was easily hidden.

Now, its a week after the gingerbread house project first started & the house is finished. It was no where near as easy as I thought it would be. Firstly, I can't beleive it took one week for the ginger bread to be dry enough to use to construct.

I'll share a photo with you. You wouldn't beleive that I was actually holding the house together with chopsticks but managed to remove them for a split second for the photo.

We stored the gingerbread house on our kitchen table. It took less than a day for the triplets to collude & figure out a way to push a chair against the table & start taking the freckles off the house.

Santa Photo 2007

I thought I might share our 2007 Santa photo!

Thanks to the candy cane bribe we managed to get a photo with all three of them in the same frame as Santa. (Actually, I have to say the candy and Kinder Surprise worked a treat because its amazing how loud 3 toddlers could scream without it, more so, how quickly they become silenced when they saw it.

In all honesty, I am a bit disappointed that they wouldn't sit on Santa's knee but I didn't want to have to deal with an assault charge if one of my 3 punched Santa or one of his elves in the nose.

Funnily enough, I thought it would be as simple as just popping them on Santa's knee & quickly take the photo, crossing fingers they didn't cry again like they did last year.

It became pretty clear that once they were within 3 meters of Santa that there was know way we were getting 1 let alone 3 on his knee (arching backs, kicking, screaming etc)Anyway, yet again the kids set the ground rules that there had to be candy, kinder surprise & also balloons at the end of it & if we met all those conditions, then they would sit have the photo provided we were between them & Santa.

On a positive note I was well prepared for this little hiccup, so when I had to sit in the photo it was no dilemma.AND YES, that is Santa sneaking off his throne to get in the photo when the kids weren't looking