The days leading up to our Christmas gathering I started planning out a few activities (many of which we didn’t even end up having time for!) that we could do as a family.  One of those activities was making ginger bread houses.

I had grand visions of everyone sitting around the huge dining room table laughing and being creative.  The houses would be ornate with lots of character and candy gushing off every side.  We would ooh and ahh over all the finished products and then snack on them for the rest of the weekend.

See, doesn’t that sound like fun?

Well, it occurred to me that there was no possible way that I was going to make actual gingerbread for the houses so I opted for the much cheaper and easier graham cracker base.  Then I picked up a few clearance candies (my favorites are the Peep Christmas trees and snowmen) and frosting to hold it all together.  Again, I had grand plans of making homemade frosting, but alas, no time again.

On Saturday we finally tried to collect people and give our gingerbread houses a try.  It was a little different than my vision…

…only a couple people wanted to participate… the frosting wasn’t holding anything together, so it was a slippery mess… Chloe only wanted to eat and not help… my house fell completely in on itself so I had to try again…we could only use 1/2 of the big dining room table b/c the other end was being used for a card game…

But you know what?

I still had a FANTASTIC time.  We still laughed and laughed.  We still snacked.  We were still creative.  And it left a lasting memory from the weekend.  And that was the whole point.

So thank you, Mom, Dad, Amy, Audrey and Chloe for making gingerbread houses with me.  And thank you, Luke & Krista for being our esteemed judges and determining that Mom’s was the best (um, which we all already pretty much knew ;))