Our annual Gingerbread Houses were made on December 23rd this year. MyDadLovesMeBestSister’s family were all absent this year, as they went to be with CuteNiece2 and her husband for Christmas, since they couldn’t come home this year. (And they have some very exciting news — a new baby in June of 2024, making MyDadLovesMeBestSister a Grandma!) I was sad that half of the family was missing, but we had a grand time anyway — the girls were all so cute — they’re all old enough now to really enjoy the decorating and they were a lot of fun. With three little girls, we decided to make a team for each girl:
Team One: TheFirstChild, TheSecondChild and FinallyAGirl (now 7 years old). Their theme was Santa’s Workshop. The boys joked that this team was the only team where one of the little girls actually got to participate. Har Har. But, this is definitely the house where the little girl did most of the work. According to TheSecondChild all the creative ideas came from FinallyAGirl. She loves our little gingerbread competitions and I was SO proud of her this year! She directed the TheSecondChild to do the repetitious little details, like placing “shingles”. (We think TheFirstChild (father to FinallyAGirl) was there for moral support or something LOL.) FinallyAGirl spent a lot of time making all the little details. She wanted to put elves making toys inside the house, but the boys convinced her that it would be hard to see the elves, so she made a little shed on one side of the house where the elf could work. Then, for the front of the house, she made a little Santa checking his list, Mrs. Claus carrying presents on the sidewalk (which I think had fallen over by the time I took pictures), and a reindeer who slipped on the ice. Her little details were perfect — I especially loved the blue ice under the reindeer. Well Done FinallyAGirl!!!
Team Two: SweetiePie and HurrayAThirdGirl (just turned 4 years old). Team Two made The Grinch’s Cave (named by HurrayAThirdGirl). They made a beautiful little brick house with vanilla wafer shingles and a beautiful colorful back wall. HurrayAThirdGirl was so cute making the pretty green tree for the front lawn — all those lucious green sprinkles. And, notice the Grinch standing in the front door.
Team Three: TheManoftheHouse, Me, and FinallyAnotherGirl (now 5 years old). FinallyAnotherGirl loves the monkey bars at school, so we decided to do a school playground. TheManoftheHouse made all our ladders for us, and FinallyAnotherGirl worked very hard on all the playground details. She made a hopscotch to the side of the house and a four-square court in the front yard (which, sadly doesn’t appear to be in the pictures), and a big blue slide off the top of the house. Then, she placed children climbing the roof to get in line for the slide. She was very proud to place her purple self at the monkey bars in front of the house.
Voting was really hard this year because I wanted all of the girls to win — they all did such great jobs — they were so patient and worked really hard. But, we always vote, and the winners this year were SweetiePie and HurrayAThirdGirl — Yay!
Now for between week — hope you’re relaxing and reviewing and getting ready for another year ahead. The years fly by!
XOXO,
Anna