The Great Gingerbread Collapse '09

For Christmas 2005, my mom and I started a gingerbread-house-making tradition with Abby. And we haven't missed a year yet. Of course, when Will came along, he gladly joined the tradition because it's really all about eating the candy that doesn't somehow become fastened to the houses fast enough! The kids have great fun, and the adults do too--I don't know who looks forward to the event more!

Will really got into decorating his this year. In the past, we mostly did it ourselves with him in our laps just eating candy. But, this year, he put the candy on all by himself and just directed me where to squirt frosting.

He was so proud! 

But then . . . the roof started sliding. Abby's was so well designed and engineered that she had no problem. (And she very artistically decorated the house almost entirely on her own--she's getting so big!). Will's started sagging just as we finished decorating. You can see the worried looks on our faces in the background of Abby's shot. I was trying to hold up the roof to let the frosting dry and set. Then, we took it apart to add MORE frosting to get better adhesion. And I was still holding it up to help it set.

Then Brad offered to take a turn holding it. The engineer in the group managed to snap one side of the roof clean in half. More frosting. More holding. After 20-30 minutes of salvage operations, we couldn't sit and hold it anymore. So we got the bright idea of propping it up. If only something were the right size. I know, how about a hunk of Velveeta and some Starbucks cup holders? Needless to say, that didn't last for long, so we just had to let it collapse. Sigh.

We all agreed that it was better to have happened to Will's house than to Abby's. She would have been in tears. We thought he might not even notice. So we let it slide and tried to keep the attention elsewhere. But eventually, Will saw it. I don't think he had any idea what was happening to it earlier, but he knew now. He said, very affronted, "Hey, who broke my ginger boy house?" Luckily we averted his meltdown by letting him eat a piece of it. Too bad we couldn't prevent the house meltdown so easily!