Gingerbread Houses

We went down to California for Christmas and it was the first time since before Billy's mission that we were ALL home together for Christmas. There are now 26 people in my immediate family. I have 4 siblings (with 4 siblings-in-law) and 9 nieces and nephews with one on the way and when you add in the 7 in my family plus both of my parents that makes 26 people together every night for dinner and fun in one house. It was a lot of fun! My mom decided this year that it would be fun to do some fun kid activities together and building Gingerbread houses was one of the first things we did. My mom and I made the gingerbread and rolled it out and baked it and cut it out and let it dry and then Billy & Jen and Sterling & Katie helped my mom put them together and then we all decorated them. We had one for each family and we had a competition of sorts. It was pretty funny! We noticed in the end results the stage of development that each family was in was VERY evident! Lol!! Sterling and Katie have no kids and were by far the most competitive. They have been planning ideas on how to best decorate their house for a long time and of course not having lots of creative, curious, eager little "helper fingers" had something to do with it, but their house was AMAZING!! These pictures do it NO JUSTICE! They had Hershey bar shutters and rolled flat starburst windows with rope licorice window grids and the most amazing chimney ever and their walkway looked like a cobblestone street with pieces of broken candy glued flat. Sterling even made a snowman out of marshmallows! AMAZING! I tell you!! Here it is:

Then there was Billy and Jen who have little Britta who is 18 months old. They had grand plans for a licorice thatched roof and beautiful decor! And Britta "helped" take off all of the candy that they put on and decided that it needed to go inside the gingerbread house front door instead! So she spent about 10 minutes loading up the house with all sorts of sweet treasures! So they turned the house around so that she wouldn't be able to reach the door and she picked up an ice cream cone that was being used in their yard for a tree and started to undecorate the house into the cone and filled it up with all the candy that was on the house! After the front door and the cone were full, she looked around for another hole to hide her candy in and found the perfect spot... Daddy's mouth!!! So she shoved candy into the unsuspecting Billy's mouth and as fast as she could pick candy off of the house she would put it into his mouth. Poor Billy looked like he was about to vomit and she wasn't slowing down long enough for him to chew and swallow or unload it!! So funny!! So their house turned out a little bare but full of love!!

And then their was the Rickards house. Their kids are a bit older and each one is VERY creative and independent and they all had their own ideas of how the house should be made! It was fun watching them designate each of the walls for different kids and then get upset when other families copied some of their brilliant ideas and finally Jessica decided that she was going to spend her own money and buy her OWN Gingerbread House kit!

and the Bohns was about the same as the Rickards. Grandma helped Brynne and Drew make it and then Garrett came in later and put his own touch on it.

Our kids ALL loved making ours but Maddie especially spent a LOT of time trying to customize our house by making sugar drop snowmen and she made a Gingerbread man that broke and then made Santa's sleigh and decorated our trees with snow. She was in there LONG after everyone else lost interest and was so diligent and concentrated on her personal touches. Sweet Girl!! Here's some pictures of our family making our Gingerbread House:

notice in this last picture of Maddie how messy the table is! And we'd been cleaning up already for about 20 minutes! SO crazy!! We had 2 tables that looked equally messy and the floor was a disaster but we had a lot of very excited and satisfied children! It was a lot of fun and well worth the mess!

The kids had so much fun spending time with their cousins! Emily and Brynne are only 6 days apart and are BEST friends! They loved spending every waking moment together!

Tyler and Drew were inseparable! They had sleepovers and Drew's house and Drew even came and had sleep overs at Tara's where we were staying. I don't think they were apart for more than 5 minutes the ENTIRE time we were in California!

I didn't get a picture of Lauren and Maddie but they spent A LOT of time together too. They had a few nights that they got to both sleep at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Nathan loved playing with Ashlyn and of course tagging along with the older kids as usual. He found a new friend while we were there that he named "Beary-Bear" and it was one of Ashlyn's stuffed animals. He slept with it every night and carried it everywhere! Santa should have thought about it and picked one up for him for Christmas!! Lol!! Nathan is such a sweet little boy and we had a lot of fun watching him get so excited for Christmas this year.

Logan has been holding up his bottle on his own and just as smiley as ever! He just melts hearts and lights up the room and makes you happy! That's all there is to it! He makes everyone happy! Little Emily spent one evening loving him to pieces and absolutely infatuated with him! I captured a few pictures of it. She is such a good big sister!