One of things the girls were most excited about for our year in the U.S. was to experience snow. Elena has never played in the snow, and it's been six years for Vivian. Elena has been studying the seasons in science class, and with her logical and literal brain, she had decided that since December 21 was the first day of winter, it would snow on that day. We were trying to explain to her that snow usually comes quite a bit later in Virginia, so you can imagine everyone's surprise when it started snowing on the morning of December 16. We told the girls it probably wouldn't stick. We had had a similar snow experience earlier in December on the tennis court.
It didn't last.
But this new snow seemed to have some sticking power. It started to stick to the table and the mat. Elena insisted on going outside to try and catch a flake on her tongue.
She got cold pretty quickly though, and went back in for more layers before heading out again, still without waterproof gloves.
Vivian got in on the act too, but again, they weren't really full prepared for snow.
It was a regular school day, so they both had online classes. As they were in class, the snow kept falling and started to really stick, so on their next break we insisted on proper, waterproof winter clothes, and then we set them loose.
After a while, we opened the back gate to get to more snow.
Friends who live farther out posted pictures of inches of snow, but our little scattering was plenty for the girls to enjoy. They made clumps of snow to throw at each other and ran around happily for quite a while. Eventually, it was time for everyone to come back in and hang up their wet things.
As a reward for their snow exercise, the girls got hot chocolate with marshmallows. Elena was still on a break, but Vivian got to enjoy hers at her desk.
Still, she had her view of the snow and her holiday poinsettia to keep her company. The snow also inspired me to get the Christmas village out and start setting up later that week. Elena was happy to "help" by bringing up the villagers.
I'm not sure what Rapunzel said or did, but apparently, she ticked off the other villagers.
Our other major Christmas undertaking was building a gingerbread house. I had promised the girls that that would be our activity for the first official day of winter break, so on Monday, we got out the kit Vivian and I had bought at Target.
Since it was our first attempt at gingerbread construction, we had chosen the simple model with everything pretty clearly laid out for us.
We were also careful about following the directions for how long to let the icing set before moving on to the next step.
Jeff worked half days the week of Christmas, so luckily he got home just in time to help with the roof construction, which was the trickiest part.
Once we were certain the roof wouldn't slide off, we were ready for the best part of any gingerbread house project, the decoration! The kit came with lots of fun candies to add on, and we still had plenty of icing.
The house project was a success! Like any good gingerbread construction workers, we had tasted the gingerbread and found it quite hard, so we decided to get some really high quality gingerbread from Best Buns in Shirlington. That meant a family walk. Along the way we found a lovely holly tree, so we had to get a picture of the girls there and in front of the house, just because they're cute.
They were very excited about their gingerbread people. Elena had picked them out, one with blue eyes for her and one with green eyes for Vivi.
We also couldn't resist the sugar cookie Christmas trees.
For dessert that night, we gave the girls permission to attack the gingerbread house, since we figured it wouldn't improve with age.
Devastation followed. The gum drops were the most popular.
The final verdict was that the house gingerbread smelled good, but was pretty hard to eat.
Still, the point of it was to have a fun family activity, and that definitely succeeded. Hooray for vacation!
