Gingerbread Mania!

Jill, Leslie and I decided to get the kids together for a little holiday cheer and chaos and yes, make gingerbread houses. Jill and I have both done them for years with our kids at school so we thought... how hard can it be? About 5 minutes in, we remembered. Doing this with 5 years olds, who usually have a smidge (and I use that term loosely) of self-control as opposed to our toddlers ranging in age from 17- 26 months was a practice in patience. I don't think I have laughed that hard in a long time!!

Ethan, Jill's oldest son, who will be 5 in March, did his by himself with a skilled hand and an exact vision of what his wanted his to look like. The babes on the other hand wanted to simply cover themselves in icing and inhale as much candy as humanly possible. You could almost hear them saying to one another in their little toddler gibber-gabber, "Wow! What is up with my mommy, she never lets me do this... here, fast, eat another pack of M&M's."

Some pictures from our adventurous morning...These are the finished products. I couldn't take any pics of us actually making them because I was covered in frosting and trying to prevent my son from choking on red hots and gummy rings.

This is Leslie's sweet sister Emily, who volunteered to come and take pictures on her day off. She is an amazing photographer and a pediatric nurse. Fortunately we only had to use her photographic services that day. There was one minor choking/puking incident in the kitchen floor due to an overindulgence of candy, but luckily no "nursing" skills were required. Thank you so much Emily for documenting our hilarious experience, I can't wait to see what all you got. You can see her pictures at estprints.com.

This is Abby, Jill's youngest, who thought the icing was "lotion". She kept saying, "ohhh, look mommy, lotion" as she rubbed it all over her face. She got a nice little spa treatment out of it! By the time we got it all off, her face looked like she had had a chemical peel.
As if making a giant mess in Jill's kitchen with the gingerbread houses weren't enough... I threw in some reindeer hats for the kids to wear in pictures. Aren't they cute under the tree!

Notice, Trace's change in wardrobe. After arriving at Jill's and seeing all of the others in their "holiday" ensembles, I realized I had stupidly dressed Trace as if he were the mascot for the UTC Mocs. Nothing screams "Merry Christmas" like yellow and blue horizontal stripes. So before the final pictures (see top, they are out of order), Jill graciously let me borrow one of Ethan's sweaters to put on Trace's sticky, icing coated body... thanks Jill!

Here they are eating their breakfast before we started at the little table... like little grown people!! Had we known how much candy they would eat later, we could have skipped breakfast entirely but at least they got a little nutrition first!

We had so much fun, we decided to make it an annual event... although we will probably have to rotate houses, you should have seen the mess we made! The kids loved it and it created memories I won't soon forget! Can't wait till next year girls... oh boy, by then they'll be 3!