Poor Snowman

Warning! May contain some graphic material.

Little man recently learned the cold hard facts of snowman building. 

Lesson 1: Snowman built in our back yard do not come to life when a hat is placed upon their head. 

 Lesson 2: Unlike the ones in his books, our snowman do not leave the yard to play with other snowman when we drive away.

Lesson 3: Rain will cause a snowman to melt away.

Thankfully, it is now snowing again and we can start over after nap time.

Holiday Card

While I love receiving Christmas cards, expecially the ones with pictures, I tend to stress out about doing my own and often end up doing a New Year's card because I waited a bit too long.  Since I once again waited too long, I decided to do a blog card instead (thank you for the idea Heather).

Merry Christmas!



Loving Life

If you have been following this blog at all, you know I love stuff made locally, and the more hands-on things become the better.  Therefore, when I found out one of the local chocolate shops, Laughing Moon Chocolates, holds candy cane demonstrations where kids can not only see how the candy canes are made but shape their own, we loaded the family in the car and headed to Stowe (I am going to apologize for the quality of some of the pictures, we had to move around a bit and didn't always have the best picture taking spot, but it is a pretty cool process).

 To start off, they take the the melted sugar and corn syrup and dump it back and forth between two big buttered trays until it has a nice gooey consistency. 

 Then, (this is the cool part) they put it on this hook and stretched it out so the air can get in and turn the candy white(The girls that work in this place have amazing shoulders).  This was Little Man's (and the bigger man in the family as well) favorite part, and I thought he was going to jump right off my shoulders and go help the lady. The older woman next to us was very amused by his running commentary during this process. Up to this point, I had assumed the gloves were so their hands would not get sticky, but at this point in the process the candy is so hot, that not only to they have to wear the gloves, they have to keep rotating the person who is stretching out syrupy mess, because of the heat.

 After that, it is brought back to these heating lamps where color is added and it is twisted into a cylinder shape, which is clipped and handed off to eager children and adults. 

 Little Man was so excited about shaping his own candy cane.

 Five minutes later we had a nicely wrapped candy cane to take home.  Unfortunately, it was dropped on the way out the door which resulted in a minor moment of emotional trauma.

That is until he realized he could eat some of the broken pieces! 

 Eating the candy resulted in the need to run around the back yard before lunch and work some of the sugar out of his system. 

Thank God for nap time, I'm exhausted. 

Christmas Tree

I know there are several debates out there in the battle of real tree vs. fake tree, but having grown up in New England, in my mind, it must be real and you must cut it yourself.  In the past few years, we have added that it must be cut in the dark and hope for the best when you get it home. 

Bucket List

One of my aunts has told me several times that by the time I am old, I will have nothing left to do on my bucket list; she might be right.

#197 of 453 running a Santa Race-2011 Ri-Ra's Burlington 5K Santa Run.