BUILDING GINGERBREAD HOUSES

12/24/16  BUILDING GINGERBREAD HOUSES...and more...

My daughter and her Girls have some unique and memorable Christmas traditions;  one of those activities is building gingerbread houses.  As this photo illuminates, building these houses is no small task, requires a shopping bag of supplies and is very intense.  The Girls are not only creative they are (all three being multi-sport athletes) also very competitive thus elevating the concentration and emotional input of the event.

This year Cindy and I had the pleasure of spending 6 or 7 weeks with the Girls and their parents (from Thanksgiving week through Christmas week) enabling us to be a part of this tradition.  The Girls love all things home-cooked and home-baked.  What that meant for the Gingerbread House Project, this year, was the addition of homemade gingerbread;  I thought that, since the Girls like to build their houses with all-things-edible (one of the qualifiers for the competition/tradition), homemade gingerbread would be a nice twist.

After a couple of hours of design, fabrication and decorating, the Girls created this Christmas neighborhood:

They created wreaths, icicles, candy shrubs, snow...just an unbelievable and creative inventory of candy Christmas decorations.  Notice the detail?

What the photos aren't able to present are the sounds of the tradition.  Girls laughing and teasing one another.  Sisters playfully diss-ing each other and whining about sharing the supplies.  Girls offering supportive, "Oh-that's-cute"s to their sister. Girls attempting to hide there over-the-top gingerbread house deal closer and adding, "Stop looking...you're cheating!"

Unfortunately, the photos lack the capacity to present the emotions of the family tradition:  the "good" kind of pride for a job well done, the joy of creating a unique Christmas decoration, the family love strengthened by Sisters being sisters.

Imagine the precious Christmas blessing we received while witnessing this family tradition!  We could see it, we could hear it...God is with us, Emmanuel.