Gingerbread Houses

This afternoon I went to Benaroya Hall and watched Handle’s Messiah with my Mama.  It was beautifully done, and – except for the part where I tried to close my eyes and listen to the music and accidentally fell asleep- I enjoyed all of it.  It was really nice to do a grown-up activity with my mama!

Afterwards, our family went to John and Lisa’s house for dinner.  Yummy pomegranate champagne and beautiful appetizers (as always).  We had such fun that we didn’t end up leaving until almost ten.  We will see how the boys respond to that bedtime…

The best part of the evening was when we made gingerbread houses...

For the past few years I have spent countless hours making gingerbread from scratch, cutting out the pieces, and attempting to make houses with them.  I have had several near-disasters – Jack turning the mixer on with the beater up and all of the dough flying throughout the kitchen; uneven dough that doesn’t fit together, under-cooked pieces that collapse under the weight of the candy…Each year has been slightly more successful, but never quite the way that I would have hoped. 

This year I went with kits.  The kits have traveled around in my car for several weeks, and I finally took them out today.  So, of course, I did not have them when I got to Lisa’s house…

Luckily Lisa had two extra sets left over from last year.  I pulled one of last year’s sets out of the box and let Eric start building it.  Next, I opened the box from this year that was exactly the same brand and shape except that it had been pre-assembled.   I brought it to the table where Eric was working.  His jaw dropped when he saw the house.  “You have got to be kidding me!” he said in disbelief.  After a second it dawned on me that he thought I had just built this gingerbread house(much faster than he had).  So of course I played along…"Gees, aren’t you done with that yet?” I asked scornfully then walked away snickering.  Eric’s highly competitive brain kicked in and he growled as the four walls of his house each fell outwards as he let them go to reach for the roof piece.

I snickered again and handed John the other prebuilt gingerbread house to open.  He quickly took the wrapping off and carried it over to the table where Eric was working.  I had to turn my back and try to control the shaking from the laughter when Eric yelled, “Seriously!!?!”

The last house was from the year before and needed to be built.  I carried it over to the table and began working.  This was the downfall of my joke.  I had hoped that Eric’s panic at being so far behind would make him too paranoid to work fast.  That was true.  Unfortunately, I overestimated my ability to assemble a gingerbread house…  It didn’t take long for Eric to see that something was not quite right.   He accused me of having some pre-built houses.  My sarcastic reply that it was “super likely that two of the identical gingerbread houses just happened to come pre-assembled, and the others did not” was good in tone, but didn’t hold up to the test of Eric’s finger touching the dry icing on the other houses…

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted…