Hello everyone! I hope everyone had a great weekend and at least got to relax a bit more than I did. Wait… What, what does that word mean? (In case you couldn’t tell, I meant to post this earlier, and didn’t have time with all of the madness!)

The weekends that we don’t have to work, we usually get some much needed down time on Saturday mornings or on Sundays after Jr. goes home. This past weekend, we had no such luck. It was such a busy busy weekend!

The Disastrous Gingerbread House & Other Festive Activities

In a recent post: New Holiday Traditions as a Blended Family I let everyone know that we were going to be building a Minion Gingerbread house! I was so excited for it, because I haven’t built a gingerbread house since I was in elementary school. I wasn’t actually able to eat that gingerbread house as it was made using milk cartons and actual glue instead of icing “glue”.

It was late by the time we started because, ya know… kids, dinner, chores, etc… We finally gathered all of the kids into the same room and started. The very first time we used the icing the side of the bag blew out. Grrr. So we decided to put the icing into a plastic baggie (because my piping bag seems to have grown legs and walked away with all of its counterparts). Then the plastic baggie blew the side out. Well. Since I am no expert, we used an icing knife, and the kids just used their fingers. It was not as fancy as the box, but everyone had fun building it and eating the candy that was supposed to go on the house. One in the mouth, one on the house. Haha!

The last gingerbread obstacle was that the roof was slipping off. So we put it into the refrigerator to harden the icing. It kinda worked. There ended up being a large gap between the two roof panels. We joked that in the movie, their roof opens so the minions could get out. Imagination at its best! All in all, it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t pretty, but everyone had fun! That is all that matters, right?

I looked up the reviews online to see if anyone else had the same issues, but most of the negative reviews were from the Minion Gingerbread House arriving broken. I would say our frosting issues were from lack of experience. So, if you have a more experienced hand with gingerbread frosting and want something cute I would definitely recommend the Minion Gingerbread House! Even our botched version was still pretty cute and fit their characters.

After that, all of the kids painted ceramic ornaments, that I got from Dollar General for $1 each.  This only took all of 15 minutes. It was nice though, because all kids ages 6 – soon to be 16 enjoyed the activity! The next morning, they were all hung on the tree.

Stressful Saturday

Saturday morning I had high hopes of sleeping in… As you may have guessed, that did not happen! I woke up to Snowball (Papa’s dog) barking, kids wrestling and breakfast being made. So, I guess I slept in later than half of my family.

On the plus side, we were all very productive! By 10 am, we had breakfast done, kids in the shower, and laundry started! With the assistance of some very strong coffee I felt very accomplished.

The stressful part came about when we were out Christmas Shopping. Yes, I know it was last minute, but we didn’t have a choice.

We wanted to go a couple towns over, but we also had a family Christmas dinner to get to. This is where my moderately mini meltdown came into effect. I wasn’t able to find ANYTHING for the boys. The girls were no problem at all. Don’t panic, check out the items in my Amazon cart. Problem fixed, right? WRONG! The items I had in my cart were prime, but no longer in stock. I couldn’t win for the life of me. Panic mode in full effect.

I managed to push aside panic mode, and refocus on getting my items made for family dinner. When we got home from shopping, I noticed that NONE of the kids chores were done from that morning. OMG… Aside from the chore chart, where we have everything neatly listed, I reminded each kid twice to do chores before we left. Once the kids got their chores done (after some mom barking), I was finally able to make my assigned items for dinner.

***ZONE OUT TIME*** I put my earbuds in, and cooked in peace. (Sort of – I couldn’t get through a whole song without being pestered)

On our way to family Christmas, we got a call from Cassidy’s grandpa asking Bubs to take him to the airport, RIGHT NOW. An hour away. So the kids, Papa and I went to the Christmas gathering while Bubs drove for two hours. Big sigh.

Aside from Bubs not being able to be there very long, we had a good time. He got there right after everyone had eaten so the food was still hot and out on the counters. Papa got to meet Bubs mom and the rest of his family for the first time ever. It went super well!! Our parents got along! (Big sigh of relief) He spent a lot of time playing with the kids and looked very happy. Papa was also included in the gift giving which I was extremely happy about! I was thankful that they made him feel included and welcomed him.

Other than all of the crazy bloopers Saturday held, it was also filled with a lot of happiness and great memories! For that, I am so thankful. Also, after we got back from dinner Cassidy and I made sugar / salt scrubs for all the ladies in the family. Jr.s mom also sent me a very heartwarming message thanking me for loving her child, and she very kindly let me know that she was happy I was in his life. It is these moments that make my heart smile and so incredibly happy. I actually teared up a little bit! When Jr. left on Sunday afternoon, we sent him with a sugar / salt scrub for his mom as well and a coloring activity that him and his sister could do together.

More Shopping Sunday

Since we didn’t get to go to a major town / city for shopping on Saturday, this meant Sunday was our day. We got a pretty relaxing morning, I guess in comparison to the rest of the weekend.

Once Jr. left for the weekend, and we got ready Bubs and I headed into Jamestown. After my mini meltdown on Saturday, a light bulb turned on in my brain. We could go to TJ Maxx before we go to Walmart!! SCORE!!

At TJ Maxx I was able to score all of the things the kids wanted, in their brands for less than Amazon! So I guess my Amazon cart fail was for a reason. We finished ALL the clothing shopping at TJ Maxx, and then went onto Walmart for groceries. Total win.

One Last Note

All in all, it was a really great weekend! 🙂 I meant to post this Monday, but here I am today and now it is after Christmas!! So, with that I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!!

I will write a separate post about my emotional roller coaster of Christmas day very soon here.