Precious Cargo

Last week I was that guy you hate to be behind driving; I was taking corners carefully and was accelerating and braking very slowly.  Why?  I had some very important things in the backseat:

I know, they are brilliant.  I spent a couple hours at the school making these with the boys' class.  Chaos is the first word that comes to mind.  You've have never seen such concentration and mayhem mixed at equal pitch.  We started with milk cartons and used frosting glue to stick on graham crackers and then added candies to decorate them.  These, N on top there and Z on the bottom, were actually mild compared to some of the other offerings, which pretty much amounted to a pile of suger in every shape and color imaginable.

N's landscaper got a little carried away and ended up putting in a path to the side wall, which was remedied by another path that leads to the candycane portico there on the right.  The object to the left of the house at the top, that thing made out of three starburst mints, two Smartees and a piece of a candycane is, of course, a lawnmower.

Z's has a sweet covered front porch with seating for six I think he said.  You can't really tell but his walls all line up with great precision, it was important to him that the milk carton didn't show.  He also really liked using those pull-apart Twizzlers, they make super piping and window frames.

Now here's the thing; most of these kids, first-graders, had to carry these home on the bus.  Can you imagine what they looked like when they got home?  Hell, most looked like they'd been dropped twice before they were even done making them.  I can imagine Mom or Dad looking and thinking: "What is that supposed to be?"

So I took theirs home with me, and drove very carefully all the way because N said as I left:  "Dad, pleeeeeease don't mess them up."  Gingerbread houses made with the all the love and imagination two six-and-a-half-year-olds could muster.

Precious cargo indeed.

From Marci's '...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat...'

"AHH! Plaid! Plaid will kill me!"

I added a YouTube link today to a song I wrote called "The Nick and Zack Song."  You'll see it there to the right.  I suggest a right click and opening it in a new window or tab, then you can stay here and read some more posts while you listen to it.  I'm not really much to look at, although the words to the song do crawl there on the bottom of the clip.