Snow Flakes and Gingerbread HousesOnly ONE more week till the due date, it is getting really close now!!!! We are passing the time by doing lots of winter crafts. A very popular one has been making snow flakes, where you fold a piece of paper in six and cut out triangles and such and then fold it open. You end up with a six sided snow flakes. They are all over the house, you can see some in the background on the window in the picture here.
Another one was more my project, making a gingerbread house for the first time ever! I have a friend who makes one every year, three floors and electric lighting! I wasn't that brave, I figured I would start with a very simple, one floor one. Challenging enough for a first try. I even briefly considered buying a kit, but somehow that didn't sound right to me, I wanted to do this myself. Little did I know... The first plan was to have it ready by Christmas. Somehow, with all the wrapping still to be done, that didn't quite happen :-) So I went to plan B: make the house on Boxing Day and have it up till New Years Day, and then we could destroy it and eat it. Didn't quite happen either, but I finally got the pieces baked on December 27th. The baking was easy, apart from needing two batches of gingerbread instead of the one I had anticipated, so I had double the dirty dishes. Oh well :-) Then it was time for the more challenging part. The Assembly Of The House! Wow, that was a lot harder than I thought it would be! Luckily I had anticipated that it might take some concentration, so I did it at night, without kids help or advice. That turned out to be a good thing. It seemed so simple. Make royal icing, use it as cement and put the house together. Well, the first two walls went very nicely. The second two were harder and made the first two fall down. Hmmmm. I thought I needed to use more icing! New try, now I got four walls up and felt pretty proud of myself. Until I started to put up the roof and everything fell down AGAIN! Why did it look so easy in the description and was it so hard to do it in real life? I was starting to doubt my gingerbread house building skills, but was too stubborn to give up :-) A few more tries, a few more fall downs and lots more frustration! I even cut everything a little bit smaller and straighter, in the hope it would fit better that way.... I ended up taking apart a Christmas present bow, so it would be a ribbon and use that to tie the walls together. I enlisted my husband's help to do the same to the roof and then I just went to bed and hoped for the best! The next day, I procrastinated taking off the ribbons. Somehow I was sure it would fall apart again, the moment I did that. But at the end of the day, I figured I couldn't delay this any longer, so took the scissors, closed my eyes and cut! Waiting for the inevitable falling apart to happen! But it did NOT! To my utter amazement, the house stayed together!!! I almost couldn't believe it and made sure I didn't breathe too loudly next to it, for fear of knocking it over after all! Today was Decorating Day. The kids had really been looking forward to that, I had not, because I was getting paranoid now. I imagined them sticking on the first piece of candy and the house immediately breaking down again! LOL Followed by the kids breaking down out of disappointment. So I made up another batch of royal icing, put the house on the table, put lots of candy around it and let the kids have a go for it. All the while hoping for the best and after I had requested some 'anti fall down vibes' from on line friends! LOL They had a blast! And the best thing was, that the house did NOT fall down! One of the walls kept moving inwards, but the kids didn't really notice that. They decorated for a while and then moved on to eating all the candy. Tara was complaining about not being able to eat the house yet, but having to wait till New Years Day. Patience has not be her strongest point lately, so that was not really a surprise :-) They were happy and content with the results, as was I. I actually was past the point that I would have cared what it looked like, I just was glad it didn't break! LOL They didn't really decorate it Martha Stewart style, and it looks like a bunch of small kids just put candy on it wherever it fitted, but it looks great to me! I am going to make this an annual tradition, although I hope that the house construction part will go better next year! I have been assuring myself that there must be a learning curve and that the first time must be the hardest and it should go better every time. I can dream, can't I? Back to the pregnancy. I saw my backup ob this week, he is such a nice guy! I had a fun chat with him, nothing medical, more some re-acquainting. He and his wife have been our backups for the last three babies, although we have never needed them, it is nice to know that they are there in case of problems. I also had a prenatal and we got our birthing tub, we are going to use an Aquadoula this time, which we borrow from our midwife. This is the first time ever that I am going to use a 'real' water birth tub. Tara was our first water birth, totally unplanned. I was sitting in the bath tub (a normal one, not very big) to deal with my labor contractions and suddenly she was moving down and came out! After that experience we did plan water births for Jane and Kate, but used a cheap, inflatable kiddie pool. It will be interesting to see how this water birth tub will work out compared to my other water births. Still feeling great, although decluttering and nesting have subsided because of Christmas and the kids gymnastics camp interfering. Hope to be able to pick it up again this weekend, I really want the house in decent order before the baby is here. No signs of labor or imminent birth yet, but that is not really surprising, since I went overdue with all my other kids too. And this time we don't have an international trip to make, so going overdue will not be a very big inconvenience. I think I'll still be pregnant when I write next week's journal, but of course, you never know!
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