Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Gingerbread Houses

This is the beginning of a long series of blogs on our Christmas holidays with all of our family plus Anita, Rob, Maxim, Jip, Wouter and Jeske who finally made it to our house after spending hours and hours in airports and on planes.

On Monday morning, Anita made a brief appearance and then spent the rest of the day fighting a 24 hour flu or something. We all felt so bad that she had had such a hard time getting here and then spent the first day in bed. But after 24 hours of rest, she felt weak but better and was able to enjoy the rest of her trip.

Garth and Rob spent the day golfing and they had a great time, so we wanted to show the rest of the kids a good time also. I took Wouter and Jeske shopping in the morning for a few last minute candies for the gingerbread houses we would make and to make sure we had food they would like. They enjoyed the stores and Wouter told me that he wouldn't be able to find his way out of the grocery store if he got lost. They were both impressed by how big everything is here - cars, trucks, streets, stores... Before starting the gingerbread houses, Wouter helped me make some carmels and peanut brittle, he is a natural candy maker.

Over the three prior days, Lonica and I had made prepared all the parts of the gingerbread houses so that after lunch we could have a girls against guys gingerbread house building contest. I gave a few explanations of how to put the house together and then the competition began!
At first Maxim said that he didn't think he would help but just watch, well that didn't last long, he came up with some of the best ideas for the guys, who got off to a fast start getting their house put together while...
the girls discussed and took some time deciding on how to decorate the roof and make the path to the house.
And then spent even more time on the detail work on the sides and the front of their house.

We were quite please with our ice skating pond, sledding hill, Rice Krispy trees and the over all results when we turned the light on inside.
Wouter worked to the bitter end and all the boys were sure they had won with their campfire, palm tree, cactus and directions for Santa.
Here are the boys with their final product
and here's the girls' final product.
We never really did pick a winner, just figured all who participated were winners. Or do you want to choose?

1 comment:

Dawna Greer said...

Wow, those gingerbread houses are both awesome and creatively original! Decorating cakes is one of those endeavors that makes my hair stand on end and I want to pull it out for some reason. It takes more patience than I have.
Looks like a lot of fun was had by all!