I used to make a gingerbread house every year around this time with my Pa. Our Gram would buy and lay out all of the candy goodness and our Pa would help us construct the house. They would then slather it in frosting and let Laura and I go to town on the decorating.... covering each and every inch of it in the sweetest, most tooth destructing candy imaginable. Every year we would devise a system to make it even MORE sturdy and impressive. We would make paths out of crumbled crackers, ponds to skate on out of aluminum foil, and even use coconut to mimic fallen snow. And somehow it was always strong enough to last an ENTIRE month. Then on Christmas morning we could finally hack off a piece to chomp on.
It is one of my fondest holiday memories.
I was feeling super ambitious yesterday morning.... all hopped up on post Thanksgiving happiness. While at the grocery store, I walked by the bakery and saw a gingerbread house kit, it had all the basics, a roof, the sides, and base; plus a bunch of generic candy to stick to it.
I got a bit sentimental standing there.
Then I got an idea....I sent the boys to pick out bags of whichever candy they wanted while I found the supplies to make homemade gingerbread and some graham crackers for the roof.
When we got home, the boys played for a bit and then they were off to the Arena to watch their cousin play hockey. While they were gone, I went about making my first batch of gingerbread.
IT DID NOT GO WELL AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The bottoms of the pieces burned and when I tried to scrape off the charred parts each piece shattered into a gazillion bits.
I decided that I would try to make it again once I got to Pa's house in the afternoon.
But of course, my enthusiasm dwindled when I got to Pa's. The boy's cousin Aurora was there, and there was NO way that I was going to get away with an hour of baking.
I ended up bagging the whole gingerbread idea in favor of graham cracker houses......I used the ENTIRE box of Graham crackers and a tub of vanilla frosting to construct 3 houses.
Flat-roofed-super-lame-wonky-graham-cracker-houses
But it didn't seem to phase the three 5 year olds who each staked their claim....on a house and a pile of candy.
And even when the inevitable happened and the houses tumbled under the shear weight of approximately a pound of candy and frosting.
There were still three little smiling faces reminding me that...
"It doesn't matter if they fall down Auntie Jella, they will still TASTE really yum!"
And as I looked back through the photos last night, I saw my own father assisting in the construction of his grandchildren's houses and I became super aware of the tradition being passed to another generation.
A tradition that I used to share with my own 90 year old grandfather who was just pleased as punch to pose for a photo with his two great-grandsons, their houses, and smiles plastered to all three of their proud little faces.
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