Christmas Activity

Just days before Christmas we woke up to find, Dash, our elf on the shelf, had brought us a fun little project to do as a family.  It was a gingerbread house kit.  We haven't ever made a gingerbread house before so this was a new and fun thing to try out!  There was just one problem....

Dash was sitting on top of the box the gingerbread house came in.  Not a big deal, right?  Wrong.  Remember we aren't supposed to touch our elf or he loses his magic.  What to do?  What to do?  I asked Brody what he thought we should do.  He put his fingers to his chin and thought hard for a minute before exclaiming, "I know!"  He glanced over at the hutch holding some of our dishes and said, " we should just get a plate and scoop him on it!"  That was a great idea I told him, but he made me think of one even easier than that.

Out came the kitchen tongs.  Dash was safely removed from his sitting position on top of the box and delivered to a perch on the branches of the Christmas tree where he could watch us decorate the gingerbread house to our heart's content!

Brody and Ryder got busy right away pulling out all the contents of the box.  We are not ones to go out on a creative limb, so we looked at the different examples of ways to decorate the gingerbread house and let Brody pick the one he liked so we could roughly have a guideline.

Trevor and I did pretty much all the icing and let the boys put on all the candies.  Being that they are 4 and 2, there was no pattern or order to the candies, but it didn't matter.  They were having a blast.  Just the day before, in the news we heard all about a shooting at a school where 26 (i think) children and teachers were killed.  It literally made me sick to think about.  Even more sick to think of how the families were doing.  Especially at this time of year.  Decorating this gingerbread house was made even more special.  Trevor and I just treasured the moments (even the mess) and were feeling grateful for our little family.

At some point in the decorating, Ryder left the table and took the liberty of helping himself to licking out any last drops of icing left in the bag we had put on the floor out of the way.  He was happy digging into the icing, and Brody was happy to have all the creative decor left up to him!

The finished project was super cute and graced our table as the centerpiece until after Christmas.  The only problem was Ry asking almost daily if he could eat the candy off the house!