The Gingerbread House: Momma Lets It All Go!

Ainsley at work and Xander
at, well, eating.

Now that the semester is over, I can dedicate some time to serious chilling. Part of that is making some hard core memories with the chilluns.  Tonight's episode: the gingerbread house. 

For those of you unaware of my FB commentary, a friend Karly posted pictures of the gingerbread house she made with her kids. I decided that one of my rewards would be trying this with the kids. I was nervous because of my hard core perfection issues. But I decided to do it. If nothing else, I can use it as a "hey, I'm trying to work through my issues" moment with my therapist.

I had to threaten her to get
her to look at the camera.

I put the house together and made one major mistake: I cut the icing bag hole too large. This began the icing apocalypse...it was everywhere and it was nasty thick. 

I had the candies in a jar (I bought some extra M&Ms and Hershey's Kisses to supplement the nasty candy that came with the kit). In the minutes it took me to get things together, Xander assaulted the candy bowls. After a while, I had to hold him away from the dishes. Candy is awesome--no doy.

Bossing her little brother.
Yes, that's candy in his mouth.

I started just showing her how to put the candies on the icing and let her go. Of course, her first action was to follow my lead and use the same kinds of candies in the same places I had. Then she moved onto dividing the candies into their own piles. Candy segregation is important to Ainsley.

 A was pretty serious about the decorating, but X was more interested in flitting about the living room being all hopped up on sugar.

The mini-tripod Sean got me
for Christmas last year is
coming in handy.

As we worked on the house, I just kept thinking about what a hot mess it was turning out to be. Then out of nowhere, Ainsley says, "This is bad." I said, "No! It's wonderful!" Then we both laughed a while. It was one of those transcendent moments where I felt like when she's an adult A and I will have similar laughs like these. Plus, you have to give credit to A's aesthetic. The girl knows when a gingerbread house looks like a train wreck. If I'd just bought the gingerbread train kit, the metaphor would have been complete.

Deigning to decorate.

I didn't stress out as much as I thought I would. It was sticky and gooey and the candy is likely gross (save the M&Ms and Hershey's Kisses, natch), but we had fun. Sean was downstairs playing Star Wars Old Republic (or whatever the new one is called), and when he came up the first thing that Ainsley said was, "Daddy!! Look at my house!"  

Testing out her handiwork

"It's great!" says Sean.

"It's bad!" says, Ainsley. 

JUST like the one on the box!