I'm sure it will come as a surprise to learn this, but I have never made a gingerbread house. I can't remember doing any growing up, but I know for sure I have never done one with the kids.
No better time than now to remedy that! The boys have been asking to build them since we bought the kits, but I made them wait until it was closer to Christmas. I figured they might want to eat the candy off of it after Christmas, so the less time it was sitting out, the better.
We also got an early Christmas present - Nonni came in for a surprise visit! Best kind of surprise ever! Henry and Nonni worked on one house while Thomas and I decorated the other one. Between the two of them, there were a few spilled candy and icing incidents, but nothing that couldn't be recovered from. ;)
I had no idea how much waiting would be involved with these houses or I would have started the for the boys the night before. Build walls - wait an hour. Add roof - wait 2-3 hours. The boys were not impressed. But Thomas was happy enough to fetch cans out of the pantry to keep everything stable until it dried.
These two were very focused on getting their walls up. Nonni claims her icing wasn't as easy to squeeze as the bag I had. She might be right - she was squeezing her hard enough that she broke the plastic bag the kit came with. Lucky for her, I have much sturdier bags on hand!
Finally time to decorate! There were a few examples on the box and Thomas couldn't decide which one to follow, so we ended up with inspiration from many of them. He told me where to put the icing for him and then decorated away.
Also, he got new glasses last week! His old frames (that we have bought 3 times) are no longer available, so he picked out these as his new favorites. So trendy!
Everything Thomas did was in a pattern. He even had to make sure he continued the pattern from once side of the roof to the other. I didn't do the right number of loops on the second side of the roof and had to scrape the icing off to try again.
Pretty sure Thomas does not know the meaning of the word random... ;)
I offered to let him take a picture of me putting icing icicles on the roof with my fancy camera. He got a super close up photo, but he was so proud of it. I'm eve smiling, so you can't even tell how nervous I am about him holding my camera over a tile floor, can you?
It was hard to tell if the house or Henry was getting more candy on his side of the table...
But these two were having a blast either way! Aren't they both super adorable??
The finished masterpieces! You should be able to figure out who made with house based on the utter randomness on one and the patterns on the other. I think they both did an excellent job and maybe next year we will make them from scratch so they aren't hard as bricks...
Emphasis on *maybe*, it's pretty hard to beat the convenience of a kit!
Since Nonni and Heather were both flying home tonight, I conceded on letting the kids open their presents early. I am usually not a fan, but it was a special circumstance. The boy piled up their presents to open, but got a little bored when we had technical difficulties getting Grandpa on skype. Hopefully none of Henry's presents are breakable!
Despite some audio troubles, we did manage to include Grandpa in on all of the fun. And the boys were super happy to show off everything that they opened.
Thomas' school had a holiday store for the kids this year where they could shop for presents for the family and the volunteers would wrap the presents so it would be a surprise. Once Nonni showed up, I added more money to his shopping fund so he could buy gifts for everyone. The day he went shopping, he was so excited about about the gifts he bought ("I bought two for Henry!"). And he did an awesome job keeping all the presents a secret.
He got Aunt Heather a shiny Christmas wreath pin and Nonni got a jingle bell photo frame. I should probably send her a photo to go in it! I still have to wait until tomorrow to see what I got...!
And since I am horrible at getting photos of us, I made Heather's friend take one of us before I took them off to the airport. We couldn't get one of everyone smiling, but this was the closest! I'll just assume the boys aren't smiling because they don't want Nonni to leave. And on that, I can commiserate. But it was awesome to have her for some pre-Christmas fun!