with a corncob pipe and a button nose, and also a soul-sucking face.

last week, the kids and i got outside to build snowmen.  neither one of them had ever built a snowman, and perhaps had never even seen one in real life, but by george, snowmen are in pretty much any cartoon that involves snow of any kind, so atticus had had snowman-making on his bucket list for, like, ever.

there was a really warm day last week when the snow got really wet and sticky, so it was perfect.  i let the big kids skip naptime and we headed outside.  little forethought was put into the activity, as you can clearly see from the wine-bottle-cap eyes that i quickly grabbed out of the recycling bin, and the arms made out of leftover christmas tree clippings that had simply not made it all the way back to the compost pile yet.

 

from christmas tree branches, to snowman arms, to rifle, to (later) baseball bat and golf club and hockey stick, pine branches really are The Multipurpose Plaything.

i did at least run inside and grab those ubiquitous carrots for our snowmen's noses, and a couple of hats.  but then i was all like, what on earth can we use for mouths?  i landed on fruit leather ropes: they were flexible, long and red, and wouldn't be too sorely missed if an oppossum or something ran off with them.

one thing i started to notice, though, as i started helping the kids attach the fruit strips as mouths, was that the fruit strips were getting simultaneously sticky as they got wet, and brittle as they got cold, which fostered in me a suspicion that these weren't the best solution after all.  if only i had foreseen what would become of those things, i would probably have chosen differently.  because here are our end results after a day in the elements:

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS, KIDDIES.  I SEE YOU WHEN YOU'RE SLEEPING.  (i mean, santa.  santa sees you when you're sleeping.  it's the same.)

HAPPY NEW YEAR, YOUNG ONES.

are those not the creepiest things you've ever seen in your life?!  gah.  i get the jibblies just looking at them.

we had a snowstorm over the weekend and there is a good amount of fresh snow, plenty of which landed on these monstrosities.  atticus looked out the window yesterday and was all, "THE SNOW RUINED MY SNOWMAN, MOM!" and i was all, "that is the exact opposite of true.  the snow attempted to cover up any record of these things ever having existed." to which i say, 'brava, snow.  now if you could just storm all over that third spice girl cd that came out after geri left so we can all go back to acknowledging that the spice girls were actually super awesome, that would be great.'