Gingerbread Houses

Friday my house smelled like Christmas.  Grandma spent all day making the pieces for 15 gingerbread houses.  The next day all the grandkids came to our house to decorate them.  These gingerbread houses are a tradition in our family and Grandma told us the story of how it began.  The first Christmas after her dad passed away her family went to my Aunt Marie’s house to spend the holiday.  They were all a little sad and missing their dad.  They saw a picture of a gingerbread house in The Relief Society Magazine and decided to make one to give away. They had so much fun giving it away that is where the tradition began.  They have been making gingerbread houses ever since. 

When I was growing up we always had to make the houses exactly the same.  We were like an assembly line putting together house after house.  We always gave them away to teachers, neighbors etc. and my mom always wanted them to look nice.  Kris was making his one year and decided to change things up a bit and decorated his the way he wanted instead of making a copy of the other houses.  When looking at his final product my mom kindly said that it was “unique”.  Kris was a pioneer and this year for the first time ever my mom let go completely and let the grandkids make them however they wanted.   My nephew Ty spent 3 hours making his masterpiece.

Kody and Clay making theirs.

 

Jaxson only wanted to eat the jellybeans. 

     Andruw and Caitlynn making theirs.   Grandma was very impressed with Ty’s “unique” gingerbread house.

Later that night we went to our ward Christmas party to see Santa.  Kade told him he wanted a roller coaster track but Jaxson wouldn’t even get close to him.  On the way home Kade was very concerned that Jaxson wasn’t going to get a present for Christmas because he didn’t tell Santa what he wanted.  I told him we would have to write Santa a letter to let him know what to bring for Jax.