Advent Activities: Holiday Party

For the fourth year in a row, we have all gone to the children's holiday party at Mama's office. And, as usual, it was a delightful affair. Lots of activities for the kids, including 3-D paper gingerbread houses to decorate with stickers, foam gingerbread people ornaments, gingerbread house placemats to decorate with stickers, a gingerbread man beaded necklace, a large cardboard gingerbread playhouse to color, and best of all, our all-time favorite party activity, cookie decorating! (Yes, the theme was gingerbread, on a day that I had helped construct the bases off 80 gingerbread houses for the kindergarteners to decorate next week!) Not gingerbread but it mattered not at all to Sis or Bud who carefully painted rainbow-colored royal icing on angels, trees, stars, and snowmen, and then decorously applied sprinkles (as opposed to the so-called shotgun approach they've used in previous years, when the decorations were twice as thick as the cookie!). They had their picture taken with Santa, warily, but gladly hugged the walking snowman (but not the walking gingerbread man). And we all ate and ate and ate: dino nuggets, fried macaroni and cheese (!), hot artichoke dip, a delicious pesto/cream cheese/pine nut layered torte with amazing 7-grain fusilli bread, plus brownies, cookies, cake, and lots of fruit. We hadn't really had lunch and didn't need dinner. And like previous years, they didn't fall asleep on the winding way home, instead waving their glow-in-the-dark party-favor wands, our own glowing Rudolphs in the backseat.