When Dad's away...

Daddy went out for a while today, mixing geocaching with Xmas gift-giving in the nerdy way that only he can...and while he was out, Ben and Mommy were busy...

They went shopping for cookie supplies and then immersed themselves in the cookie-making process for hours of fun!

Ben liked mixing the dough up, especially when he got to "clean" the mixer-blades...


After the mixing and such was complete, they decided to add some Christmas coloration to the cookies, so we ended up with some red and green cookies...which they arranged in a "tree", topped with a decorative tree that Ben made in school this week...


Once the cookie-making fun was complete (note huge pile of edible fun), they moved on to painting...


Warning: Art Shot Ahead!!! I thought that this was a pretty cool picture of the paper plate in which they mixed colors of paint to make such colors as "Gurple"...


It looks from the pictures as though they had a lot of fun, and I, for one, am very glad that they did it all in the order that they did...

Mom's Back!!!

Mom was away this week at a conference, and boy are we happy that she's back!

We all slept in a bit this morning, then got up to our hot beverages of choice, and to open some of the Christmas cards that came in the mail while Mom was gone. We got the lights on, a fire going in the upstairs fireplace (the downstairs stove is always going...it heats our house), some Christmas music on the CD-shuffler, and Mom and Ben assembled a "Gingerbread House" that came in one of the magazines he subscribes to.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful (ish)
but the fire, and company, is so delightful
and since we've no place to go, let it snow, let it blow, and be cold...