Traditions

One of my kids' favorite traditions on Thanksgiving is building a gingerbread house at 'Gra and Pa's' house after we stuff ourselves with turkey and pie.  This year we had the help of Aunt Bert and Aunt Janelle.  Here they are helping build the walls.

 Here is Aunt Bert drying the icing with a hair dryer. Directions said to let the house dry 30 minutes before decorating.  Yeah, right - the people who wrote the directions don't understand the attention span of children.  We tried to speed up the process with the hair dryer.

 Fail.  The only thing the hair dryer did was melt the icing.  Disaster of a gingerbread house.  To fend off the tears, Uncle Ben and Aunt Janelle drove to Wal-Mart to get an auxiliary house to decorate.

 They came back with a gingerbread village.  Mini houses that each kid could decorate for themselves.  Here is Lydia with her church.

 Aunt Bert was the designated house builder.  She had control of the icing and putting the walls and roof together for each of the mini-houses.

 Here is Annie with her house - her hand is kind of in the way.

 Aunt Berth had icing everywhere - the bag exploded halfway through building.  She was a champ though!!

 Here is Ahren with his gingerbread teepee.  Gra helped him build his, but he did all the decorating.

 And this is my favorite picture from Thanksgiving.  Maria wearing Lydia's headdress.  She was Princess Snowflake at preschool this year.

Thank you Aunt Bert, Aunt Janelle, Uncle Ben and Gra for making this Thanksgiving memorable!