I've had me a day...

I was going to write a post all about how my awesome and beautiful gingerbread house came to be.  In the past, I've made houses that looked like this:

 2010, first gingerbread house ever.  Construction was a little saggy, but I did a pretty good job piping stuff considering I'm really, really bad at it.

And This:

 2011: Ice cream cone trees, little stands for the ginger bread folks to stand on, pretty good piping again, chimney addition.

And This:

2012: Kirby and a fisherman join the scene and I toyed with pretzel windows.  It was the first year for a cereal roof, which fell off twice before finally staying put.  The boys did a lot of the piping in this one because 1) I was sick as a dog and 2) They are actually really good at piping.  They were 4 and 6, people!  4 and 6!  Look at that star!

Every year, a little more practice, a little better execution, a little more detail... I figured by the fourth go around I'd be ready to lay something gorgeous on ya'll.

But since I'd got all creative and fancy blogger pants, I thought I'd change to a different recipe for the house AND also change the glue.  This is what happened:

And this:

 And this:

Nailed it.

So what I'm giving you instead is a lesson in... I dunno... stubbornness and a shear force of will on the part of my children to consume as much gingerbread house candy as humanly possible without exploding like that guy on Monte Python. 

I ran to the store and bought graham crackers and canned frosting.  Yup.

And my son, who just turned 8 still rocked it with the piping.  Look at those icicles!

And my son who is about to turn 6 is rockin' some hella-cool architecture skillz.

 And I got to put my cereal roof on again.

And the moral of the story is that no matter what you have planned for the holidays, if you're with people you love, it's time well spent no matter how it turns out.