Gingerbread houses

A friend invited us over for her annual gingerbread house decorating party and I simply could not not go! We'd never been to a gingerbread decorating party and actually, had never decorated gingerbread houses before. I knew I'd have my hands full with Stokes and William there and wouldn't be able to devote much time to helping Ryan with hand-over-hand to decorate his gingerbread house, so I left him in school and picked up the other two to go to the party, since it was during the week. Stokes and William were so excited when I picked them up in the middle of the day. I, unfortunately, had to go back to work that afternoon, so the dropping back off at school wasn't quite as eventful and exciting as the picking up. Ha!

I didn't get any pictures of our wonderful hostess, Kahla (the boys' former soccer coach) or her boys, Brody and Maddox, but Stokes and William had a blast, nonetheless. Food, gingerbread house decorating, playing in Brody and Maddox's massive and awesome playroom....what more could you ask for?!?!

Notes: always get a pre-assembled gingerbread house (or condos, in our case LOL). The ones that aren't assembled don't stick together very well, and you may end up having to use a hot glue gun. Also, the box indicated that these contained eggs...I wasn't sure if it was in the gingerbread itself or if it was in the candy decorations that came with it, so I had to be careful to try to not let Stokes eat any of it (very tough). He got by with a few little pieces of candy but did not have a reaction, so I was thankful.

I failed to take a picture of the finished products, but let me assure you, they were 100% works for art. Not. :)

In the end, they made cute Christmas decorations in our kitchen during the holiday season...and no, we never ate them!

Pictures of the decorating:

William doing his "picture smile"

time to decorate

Initially, I was the only one piping icing on to the houses and the boys were just adding the candy. Well, it got challenging to maintain that level of control and within minutes Stokes had the icing and was insistent upon putting it on by himself. I lost that battle. #rollingwithit

Stokes with the icing bag = trouble

More kiddos decorating!

Such a cute party!