Decking the Halls, etc

AH, the happy prospect of eating the finished product!

Yes, in case you can't quite make it out, that IS an old fashioned playpen surrounding our glorious * fake (*see "Flashback:holiday hilarity, O Tanenbaum) tree.  It at least increases the likelihood that the tree will make it another week.

Every year we decorate a ginger bread house together - it was a tradition in my house growing up,when my mother would actually bake a legitimate ginger bread, and we would build a house. As I added children to my family, starting with my oldest two  who were the perfect ages for such festive crafts at seven and nine our first year together, we continued the tradition, and I recall one year when my cousin Marisa and I were the only ones actually invested enough in this tradition to put the effort into building and decorating the annual gingerbread home (at the time we had seven kids bewtween the two of us - none of whom cared to help).   This year my "big kids" were not here to help, and so we waited for Rilla to be sleeping, invited Nana over, and decorated our first ever pre-assembled house. Even the frosting was ready to go!

Oh man, am I in trouble when Nana sees this!