School Snow Day 12/13/10

When we woke up this morning and saw that school was canceled due to a snow day, I was really worried about having the kids cooped up in the house for a 2nd day in a row.........thankfully it actually went pretty well. I had somethings to d to keep the kids busy and occupied.

Last year after Christmas we found a foam gingerbread house kit. I decided that today was a good day to pull it out. The kids took turns putting different stickers on the house to decorate it the way they wanted it. The same time we bought the gingerbread house kit we bought a couple of magnet sets. One of them is a dress-up-Santa and the other is dress-up-a-snowman. That kept the kids occupied for awhile. ;-)
Over the years we have accumulated a lot of Christmas "toys". This year we put all of them in a bucket and the kids can play with them whenever they want to. They found a tic-tac-toe game. Of course Samantha didn't know how to play it correctly but it was fun watching them.
Marc pulled out one of our many play nativity sets to play with. He set up quite to scene.
I saw a picture of a friend making peanut butter cookies with Hershey kissses and they looked yummy. The only problem.....the only kisses we had are some that both kids had gotten from Grandma. Marc saw the recipe and got really excited about making the cookies. When I told him the catch he said "oh". I asked him if he was willing to "sacrifice" his kisses to make the cookies knowing that in a week he was going to be getting a ton of chocolate in his stocking. After a few minutes of pondering, he said he was willing to use them. So, off we went to make more cookies.
My little smarty pants got the recipe, the ingredients, and all of the correct measuring cups and spoons we were going to need.
Since Marc was SO excited to be making these cookies, I out Samantha to work unwrapping all the kisses we needed. (and it is more great fine motor practice)
Both kids helped roll the dough into balls, roll them in the sugar and put them on the cookie sheet to be baked. When it was time, each of them got to out kisses on the cookies.
We were short a few kisses so we tried using some of the flavored one we had from our pretzels.
After Daddy got home and we had dinner it felt like a good night to break out "The Christmas Game". I remember playing this game with my Mom and brother when I was younger. It is a very, very basic form of Monopoly, only Christmas themed. It brought back lots of fun memories from my childhood. I am so tankful that I am able to carry the tradition on with my kiddos. Hopefully they will do the same down the road.
What I thought was going to be a long, bad day turned out to be a very fun, family day. :-)

Church Snow Day!! 12/12/10

We had a feeling as we were driving home Saturday night that the weather on Sunday morning was going to be yucky. So, we stopped at the store and bought the supplies to make a few more things that are on our Christmas goodies list. It's a good thing we did because church was canceled.

We were sorry to miss church, but glad to be able to stay off the roads and glad we could get some more of our Christmas baking done. The first thing on our list were Mrs. Field's chocolate chip cookies. Both kids helped us mix the ingredients.Marc helped me spoon the dough onto the cookie sheets. He really is a good little baker!
This recipe made something like 8 dozen cookies, so we spent a lot of the day baking sheets filled with dough to turn into yummy cookies.
The next thing on the list was chocolate and chocolate mint fudge. Marc helped Daddy make the fudge by pouring in the chocolate when needed.
We also made red & green rice krispie treats. However, as the marshmallows were melting, something went wrong and they didn't turn out. :-(

We enjoyed spending our church snow day together as a family. :-)