Best Morning, part 1

Wow, folks!  Welcome to The Accidental Blogger's 400th (!) post!  In honor of this momentous occasion, I'll be hosting a giveaway (tee hee!  I love the sound of that :-).  One lucky reader will win a lovely Apple & Cinnamon Velvet 40 hour candle that I got for free using a coupon--smells yummy!  Just leave a comment, telling me what you like best about The Accidental Blogger, to be entered into the drawing, and I'll draw the winner's name out of my hat, or maybe just choose the response I like best.  Please note, if you read my blog via email or facebook, you will need to actually go to my blog (http://bluefield5.blogspot.com/) and leave a comment to enter.

So yesterday, I told you that I had the best morning (I'm such a tease), and now I'm going to tell you about the first part of my great morning (stretching it out for all it's worth...by the way, my brother claims he's no threat to me this month, but I don't think I can afford to become complacent). 

Our school district had a late start yesterday--they do this about once a month to give the teachers time to do whatever it is teachers do when their students aren't around, so in addition to Bubby and Pal, I also got to hang out with Logo and Code-man for an extra 2 hours yesterday.  We started with home made, whole wheat, chocolate chip waffles for breakfast--yum!

And then, Gingerbread Week continued over at Camp Scarlet, as my friend J refers to this crazy place (of course, she uses my real name...), with the construction of graham cracker gingerbread houses (or, as Pal would say, "Grandma cracker" gingerbread houses).

We used all sorts of delicious goodies to decorate our houses.  I did notice, however, that no one opted to use the cheerios or raisins that I tried to slip in there :-)

I put about 1/4 c. of mortar...I mean frosting...into snack sized ziplock bags, then snipped off a corner, so the kids could pipe their own mortar onto the structures.  Logo was pretty sure he wasn't going to be able to do it without help, but he proved himself wrong!

Here's Code-man, adding pastel mint-chip Christmas lights to the side of his gingerbread chapel.  Later, he added a bell to the bell tower (and ate the roof, since it kept collapsing on him--but not before making a valiant effort to save the roof, making braces from various edible materials, until it became obvious that nothing was going to work).

To the cloud!  Two out of four isn't bad, right, considering that I'm cloud-less?
Here are the finished structures...and Pal eating a grandma cracker.

Oh, how lovely...a beautiful Christmas display. 
Looks like that camel is about to take a bite out of Code-man's chapel, doesn't it?

We had so much fun!  Really.  I wasn't expecting to, because generally when we do projects of this type, the children need too much help for me to actually enjoy the process.  After all, there are 4 of them, and I only have 2 hands (and only one brain, which is the real problem).  But it was so great to witness each child use his individual creativity to create his own unique creation (whoops, where's my human thesaurus now?).  I think the real joy came from letting go of any preconceived ideas I might have of how this process should go, and just letting the activity unfold through the ideas and actions of the kids.  It's really not about the finished product, not at all.  It's about the process, and, even more, about spending time with some of my very favorite people.

Stay tuned...up next, Best Morning, part 2.