Gingerbread night

Ian's commute is changing our evenings. For pretty much as long as I can remember in our married life (even once Kylie was here) we ate at home through the week and went out to eat on Friday nights. We tried continuing that trend two different Friday nights, but by the time Ian gets home and we get out, the kids are crazy hungry and then it begins to run too close to bed time. Let's just say that both times we narrowly avoided leaving the restaurants in disgrace...

I figured that we need to start embracing a quiet night at home on Fridays, so today while we were on our flashlight run to Target (long story for another post) I picked up a gingerbread house kit.
Step one is to "knead the frosting" to get it to the correct consistency. Luckily we had two experts to help out with that! Then Ian "iced" together the house and it required 15 minutes to set.

We opted to bundle up and take a walk around the neighborhood to view the light displays up close. We knew that it was cold outside honestly I think that the bundling took the 15 minute drying time, but the moon was beautiful and we decided to go for it. Thankfully there are many folks in the holiday spirit on our street, so the kids "oohed and ahhed" on our walk, and Ian and I enjoyed some exercise and conversation. (Among other topics I shared with him my most embarrassing moment ever that involves mistletoe, traditional Bavarian dress, forgetting to wear tights, and a quick spin in front of my 5th grade class, but that's another story for another time!)

One house stood out from all the rest...

When we got back it was time to get busy!












For those that know me well, you can imagine that it took every bit of my restraint to keep from grabbing the candy out of the Caleb and Kylie's hands and putting it on myself. I like things neat and orderly and our gingerbread house is not going to make a picture dictionary for EITHER of those words. I'm not sure in the end if more candy ended up on the house or in their bellies, (or third option, on the floor where it was picked up and then promptly dropped by Maya) but hey, we did have fun!
Oh, and word to the wise, if you feel tempted to snitch a bite of our house once we start eating it, you may want to discard the candy as a close look at the blue one in the center (compared to the one off in the top right corner) shows that most of the candies on the house were probably sampled BEFORE they went on!

And here is the most likely reason that Kylie was still awake in her room at least an hour after we put her to bed so we could watch The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe...Gotta do something with that extra frosting, right? Don't worry, Caleb got a mouthful too, but the picture turned out blurry.

**And yes, moms and aunt/uncle, you read that right! Kylie awake in her room after being put to bed WITHOUT either of us in there! Turns out a flashlight is all we needed...**