We had a busy day today! I’m exhausted! Alan went to an energy conference all day so the kids and I decided to do some holiday activities. Starting with a Gingerbread Festival! I hear about this every year, but this is the first year we’ve actually made it. People donate fully decorated gingerbread houses that are auctioned off for a local non-profit. There’s also a silent auction, craft booth, and tons of a kids activities. It was fun, but totally chaotic! We bid on one gingerbread house when we first got there and another one at the end, once we saw we’d already lost the first one and I wasn’t willing to bid more than $30 for a gingerbread house! I suspect we didn’t get the second one either or else I think they would have called by now. I also bid on two items from the silent auction… but again, I’m assuming no call means no win. Oh well.

There were some pretty awesome gingerbread houses on display…

This one made me laugh. Occupy Candyland.

This all white one was just amazing!

Decorating gingerbread cookies, donated by KAF. Yum!

It's 10:30am and this is her second holiday cookie of the day! Can you tell?! :)

Holiday story time

After about an hour and a half of that chaos we decided to head to Panera Bread for lunch and a few errands over that way. I’m not sure where my brain was when that decision was made! Saturday in West Leb is never calm, but when you add in the whole holiday thing, it was just more chaos. The line at Panera was out the door, but we waited and luckily it moved quickly. Then we went to Home Depot where they had nothing I wanted and Jo-Ann’s Fabric which I’m super excited is now open and expanded! We got lots of things there and lucked out because the line was insane when we first got to the store, but there was no line at all by the time we got around to checking out. That balances out the Panera line, right?! :)

This is how we roll these days.

Eve was initally mad that she doesn't get to use the kindle in the car too, but she's eventually resigned herself to old fashioned books again (which I think she really prefers anyway!)

Lex found a train set at HD that he really wanted. I told him to write a letter to Santa. He left the store in an existential crisis. :) (just kidding... kind of!)

When we got home were were all EXHAUSTED! I was so tired that no only did I set aside my to-do list (ha! like I’m that organized these days!) and sat down on the couch to read for an hour, but I actually dozed for 15 minutes! I haven’t done that in a very long time. Lex came down from his quiet time and announced that he had four blog posts he wanted to make. :) Late afternoon passed by with some blogging, some crafting (Eve made gingerbread necklaces for the nativity characters), and some dinner. Then bedtime! Yay. Now it’s bedtime for me. We are all looking forward to a DO NOTHING day tomorrow! I hope to read the paper. That’s my big goal :)