Christmas crafts

Whoever said that making (from SCRATCH) gingerbread houses with a 2 and 4 year old was FUN was on some heavy duty happy pills....I told Jackson that we could do a Christmas craft the other day, and of course, he picks doing a gingerbread house. ONLY he didn't want to do it with the packet that I had bought, he wanted to do it out of graham crackers. (oh yeah, and it said it would be "helpful" if you used little milk cartons to put the walls around...but of course we didn't have any of those!) So off we went, and learned the beauty of wood glue (no longer an edible gingerbread house!) that didn't dry fast enough, and frosting that was not really kid-friendly either. The whole process went something like this, "Okay, Jackson, I think it's okay for you to try and put the roof on now...nope! No it's not! Stop pushing so hard! You're making the walls fall down again! GRR! Max! Stop eating all the m & m's! There's not going to be any for the house! Jackson, for the last time, let me dip the candies in the frosting, it's not really staying for you when you do it. Max! Stop eating the skittles! Jackson, PUH-LEASE stop trying to do this all by yourself...I have to help you with it. Max! For the love, quit eating the candies! Here, eat another graham cracker, we have lots of those...." -Uh you get the idea. It was fun. Sort of. No, it really wasn't, and the boys are probably hoping to never have to do a "fun" Christmas craft again. I think I will pick the craft next time, not the other way around. But they were sure happy later that night, when everything had finally dried, and actually looked like it was a fun project that we had had LOTS of fun on! (nevermind that Max's little roof collasped again about an hour after the photos were taken) The memories will last awhile...