Getting in the Christmas Spirit

Today we made gingerbread houses. We went to the store this morning and headed up to Round Rock to build them with Grandpa Mark and Grandma Susan. When James was napping my mom and I put the houses together. We did a little research and found the best way to adhere them together was to make a caramel and dip the sides of the houses together. This made the joints so strong that they would not fall apart. This is definitely something I recommend to those of you with kids and want to build strong gingerbread houses. Definitely assemble them without the kiddos because the sugar is h-o-t.




We used graham crackers and tons of candy to decorate. They turned out so cute!



James' and his armless/legless/headless gingerbread man


Grandpa Mark's with his self portrait gingerbread man sun bathing


Grandma Susan's (love the window boxes)


Jimmy's (he gets the award for best shingles)


Anna's (it looks just like our house, right?)


Some of us also decorated gingerbread men =)

Jimmy's self portrait with a burger and fries


And Anna's Rudolf



James did great. I was a little worried that he might not decorate the house and just stuff himself silly with candy. He did have some candy, but he decorated his house and knew when he had had too much candy and stopped.

He ran his sugar high off in the yard next door with the neighbor boys who taught him to play soccer. It was so fun to see James interact with the older boys, and they were so caring to have been so patient with him.

Today was a great day. It really felt like we were making some family memories and traditions =)