Gingerbread House Battles!

 

I suspect this old toothbrush might not get used again!  Jingle Bell greeted Maddie this morning before she went down the stairs, and that's her December routine in the mornings - putting together her LEGO Spider-man Advent Calendar pieces together.  Maddie the last two days has gotten a few accessories.

You can see above a newspaper sales box, plus a street lamp with a camera on it, plus a banana peel too.  Slowly, we're building up a scene here and it's going to be fun!

So here we are today, the Christmas season, and we did our annual KPTV Gingerbread House Battle!  You can see one of the ones I helped build above, and below too - Josh and I were "elves," periodically helping out both Bailee and Camille as they had a timed competition to get these gingerbread houses done.

The thing about these competitions is that there are wrenches thrown in the plans.  For example, at one point, Camille and Josh had to wear the famous upside-down glasses for two minutes.  Or Bailee and I had to have our arms taped together as we worked for three minutes.  Yikes!  And then, Josh and I were switching places twice and candies are given or taken away and... oh, boy.  It was crazy, but fun and hectic with the timer and trivia questions and sticky icing and decorations and fun.

In the end, Pastor Lance came in for the final judgment.  The whole thing was fun, and we'll have it all edited for a few Sundays from now.  Maddie wants to keep it a surprise.  But this time next year, Maddie, you'll be probably helping out with one of these videos.  It should be a really fun!

The rest of the day was fun too, of course, although cold!  Maddie had a good day at school - she's enjoying some of her teachers, and photography is always fun.  We got over to taekwondo tonight for a special practice, and that in turn led to FCY - busy night for Maddie!

It was ugly sweater night, and Maddie needs an ugly sweater.  She still wore something festive tonight, and although she got there to FCY a little late due to the practice time at the studio, she still had a lot of time at FCY.  It's so cold out there though!  We're in this Canadian cold for the week, and it feels like winter more than it needs to!  There's snow up in the mountains, with pictures from Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge showing snowfall in December, never bad imagery.  

Mom has been recovering, and Dad's surgery is upcoming on Friday.  We're moving forward with recovery, and that said, it might be a Christmas season at home this year. 

One funny thing about days where Maddie sleeps in:  she really sleeps in.  She's a teenager, so who doesn't when they're that age.  Regardless, Mom did have a pretty impressive skillet breakfast made, and Maddie was still snoozing and it was pretty late.  So I sent her a series of rhyming texts... which went unanswered.  Which is when I made them into this super loud anthem song which I played from downstairs.  I'll close with that here... the computer came up with really fun music to go with the lyrics: