Annual Gingerbread House Making

Every year since I can remember, my mom would make gingerbread houses, from scratch, for us to frost and decorate. This is one of my favorite traditions and I am so glad she is still willing to do it for the family. Natalie and Kelly have even done them the past few years and love it too!
Kelly helped Tegan with hers a bit, but Tegan was pretty vocal and active on where she wanted what. She also pulled my brother Aaron's trick, and stuffed candy in the inside!

 Hailey was pretty meticulous and lined all her candy up, counted it, arranged it by color, stacked it, etc.

 Adding some "snow,"

 adding some finishing touches,

 Mom working on hers,

Cheryl and Shelley working on their masterpieces,

One of the best parts, eating some of the candy! One for me, one for the house, one for me...

Here's my house!

Tegan's house,

Hailey's house. After being so precise with the candy (she lined up on the board, but never used frosting to hold it down), she knocked it all off and said, "Act-ture-re (actually), this is too much candy, I don't want to get a tummy ache."

Natalie and her house,

Kelly with hers,

I love Aunt Shell's. She went with all white (to Tegan's disapproval, since it didn't have much candy on it).

Oma and Mawga's houses,

After we made our houses, the girls played for a bit. They got into the dress up clothes that Oma keeps at her house,

We had a yummy lunch,

then everyone left, and my girls stayed with Opa and had some rest time, while my mom and I went shopping. What a fun, memorial day it was! Thank you Mom for keeping on with the tradition! Maybe next year you can start teaching Hailey how to make the gingerbread and frosting (it'll just skip a generation).

When we got home, we showed Daddy our houses, since he had to work and couldn't join us.