Handprints highlight vacation

Take a little bit of salt and the same amount of flour, add enough water to make a stiff dough and you do not have a recipe for Christmas ornaments as the recipe promised.
It was supposed to be a simple project. Mix the above ingredients, form into a pancake, press the children’s hands into the pancake, cut around the hands, bake the dough then let the children paint it. The idea was that the heel of the hand would be Santa’s hat, the thumb the tassel, and the fingers his beard, with the face drawn onto the palm area. It looked really cute in the picture.
I showed the children what the end result was supposed to be. I measured out the dry ingredients into plastic cups. I filled other cups with the correct amount of water. They mixed it all up. Actually, it was about half mixed before they dumped it out onto the table.
They played with the mess for almost an hour. Jacob formed his into a base for the whisk which then became a space rocket. After the rocket blasted off several times, he handed me his portion and demanded I make a fish.
It was a very poorly formed fish, but he was happy. Then he added spots with the handle of the whisk. As they began to lose interest, I made a pancake out of Nicky’s dough and pressed his hand into it. It made a very nice impression. Emma made her own hand print in hers. I flattened some of Jacob’s dough and pressed his hand into it, obliterating the polka dots. I put their creations, including Jacob’s fish, onto a baking sheet. He formed the leftover dough into an alligator, or maybe a salamander and we baked that also.
We painted them the next day. Not one looked like the picture. Emma broke the thumb off hers, saying it wasn’t needed. She then colored the remaining sculpture to look like her favorite character from the television show, Duck Dynasty. It was a remarkably accurate depiction. Nicky scribbled on his with colored markers. Jacob wasn’t interested and his ornament remains off-white.
So much for Christmas ornaments. At least it was easy to clean up.
The next day we went frog hunting while Emma was at school. Jacob asked me to stick my hand down a tree stump. I declined. He said there were two frogs down there and he couldn’t reach them. I looked, and didn’t see anything. He and his little brother tried poking around with a stick. They dangled various things down the stump.
I petted the horses then sat down for a bit to talk to my daughter. After awhile, Jacob and Nicky came over, frogs in their hands. “Fwog!” Nicky said. Jacob grabbed it out of his hand. Nicky yelled and grabbed for it. The resulting tussle surely caused trauma to the frogs’ state of mind and to their soft bodies.
Both frogs were subjected to kisses, examination, squeezing, shaking and other unpleasantness. When Jacob refused to let Nicky hold either frog, he ran off and found another one. This one wasn’t as brain damaged as the other two as it chirped and puffed out its chest in an effort to make itself appear larger. All three frogs were taken for a ride in the wagon. They were finally released when the boys took an afternoon nap. I’m sure that they will each be caught many more times in their lives.
The vacation spent with small children is over now. Ornaments and frogs are but a memory. The next time we see them, they will be older. Children change so rapidly, as do their interests. I cherish the hours we spent making various crafts and catching frogs. I am honored to be able to spend time with them and to be trusted enough to hold their frogs.[[In-content Ad]]