surviving a vacation at home

Today is Day Three that we were not supposed to be at home. Remember that 6am flight Monday morning we were supposed to be on? Canceled yesterday at noon. Waking up this morning to mountains of snow and more coming down, I can understand why. Hopefully the weather will be clear enough to fly us out tomorrow. Otherwise we might miss Christmas, and here's how we feel about that:


(Those are sad faces, if it's not obvious.)

We haven't been home for Christmas since before James was born, and we haven't had this much snow in a couple of years, so we are trying to make the most of our unintended vacation and have as much fun as we can.


On Saturday we went sledding, and while we have no photos of the actual sledding, we have happy smiles of kids playing in the snow:



(I think we need a new camera; the color quality of our photos is going further and further downhill.)

When not playing outside, my kids have been spending a lot of time with video games. They're still hooked on Spore, and they got Lego Batman from my sister and her husband for Christmas, so it's hard to tear them away sometimes. Ordinarily I try to keep the video games to a minimum, but really, I can't bring myself to care lately. We're supposed to be with their grandparents right now. If video games make them a little less sad about that, so be it.

I've been baking a lot, because what's Christmas without baking? So we have pumpkin muffins and granola bars and peanut butter cups, and an apple strudel for breakfast this morning. The snow has been heavy enough to intimidate us from going to the grocery store (that and the thought of all the terrible drivers on the road) but it's amazing what you can make from odds and ends in the cupboards and the freezer.

The best, though, is the gingerbread house my friend Sara brought over yesterday. Here's what it's supposed to look like, per the package:

And here's how ours turned out:

When we opened the package, we found a lot of broken pieces that had to be repaired with frosting. Most of the little figures were broken as well, though the frosting couldn't glue them back together. So our happy holiday gingerbread house evolved into a sort of Christmas House of Horrors. The hunchback was the perpetrator (at least we think he/she/it is a hunchback -- a little hard to tell with these candy people): the little boy is strung up on the side of the house, and the little girl has been decapitated in the front yard. We contributed to the depravity by committing cannibalism once the house was finished.

Here's a close-up of the poor little girl.


So that's how we're filling our vacation days. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be off to the west coast, and hopefully we'll make it in time for Christmas. I'll keep you all updated.