The Christmas season has begun at our house. This morning the advent count-down calendars went up, the first Good Deeds slips were chosen, and the girls set up their mini Christmas trees in their rooms. Rachel asked if we had any Christmas books, so I hauled out our ridiculously large pile to read.
For several years the girls and I have gone to a local Gingerbread Festival. We always have a lot of fun, so this year we invited a bunch of friends from church to come along. It was a terrific way to spend the morning.
Rachel went to the festival with Granny and Poppy yesterday, but she was perfectly happy to be returning today. She is not particularly interested in gingerbread decorating, but she does enjoy the candy and icing!
The festival provides everything you need to make a graham cracker gingerbread house and usually it works quite well. But today, something was off. Too much humidity? Cheap graham crackers? A bad batch of icing? In any case, the houses would NOT stay together. I re-built Rae's 4 or 5 times and then gave up.
Rachel didn't care. She just ate the candy and ran off to socialize.
Katherine had difficulty keeping her house together, too, but she was much more patient and creative.
(And it always help to take a little taste every now and then.)
She worked a long time and was pleased with her final product.
Rachel had to inspect everyone's house. And see if they had any unused candy lying around.
There were fabulous, fancy gingerbread houses on display. Some of them were incredible works of art!
Rachel's favorite was Dorothy's house, complete with gingerbread Dorothy and Toto, a tornado, and the doomed witch's legs with their ruby slippers.
My favorite was a gingerbread replica of real house in town.
After the we were gingerbreaded out, we all went to our church for a lunch of carry-out tacos. We had all "adopted" a needy family in town for Cristmas, buying clothes and toys for their 3 little boys. So after dinner, we wrapped up a big pile of presents. It was a good way to start Christmas.
