Gingerbread Houses

Morgan and Taylor invited the Trebilcock and Tady kids over to build and decorate gingerbread houses on Dec 23rd. We were going to go with the graham cracker houses but Christa found an awesome deal at Walmart for gingerbread kits for only $3.00 each. They came with the gingerbread already cut out to shape, frosting, and decorations. We also brought over some other small candy that has been laying around since Halloween. We had four kits one for the Tady kids, my kids, Morgan, and Taylor. Brenton was at a YM activity, Connor wouldn't care about decorating and when I did small graham cracker houses for preschool a few weeks ago Hayden lost interest real fast, I thought it would just be Payton, Kennedy, and Talmage decorating it. Payton and Kennedy wanted to help Taylor so it was just Talmage decorating it with my help. They all had a fun time. Talmage decorating the back of the house

Payton, Kennedy, Sonoma, and Taylor decorating the girls house

Talmage attempting to do the frosting

The finished product

Talmage so proud of his work

Hayden with mom

The secret to having straight sides and a non sagging roof is hot glue. Yes, I hot glued the sides together and the roof. I didn't and certainly the kids didn't have the patience to wait for it to get hard. It's not like they are going to be eating the whole entire thing anyway and if they want to eat a little gingerbread just stay away from the sides. It's gross after a few days anyway. gingerbread isn't all that great to begin with let alone stale gingerbread.

After we got done, we headed over to Steak N Shake for some lunch and to use our free meals card before the month was over. I think everyone else had the same idea. It was after 1 pm when we got to Steak N Shake and that place was crowded. I guess everyone was out doing Christmas shopping and didn't feel like going home to grab some lunch so they all headed there. When I went to pay for my meal, I gave them my 2 cards that take off $8.50 each so $17.00 total. It is usually a big pain in the neck to use these cards together because someone who came up with this promotion didn't plan on people using more than one card per check so it is a big long deal. They usually have to split up the check. Some how the lady and manager that was there were messing up and told me I didn't owe anything. Bonus a free meal for me and 5 kids Merry Christmas to me. The least I could do was leave a good tip even though our service was way slow. Next month is the last month of free food. It was fun but it will be nice to go to other places when going out to eat.