Traditions and Obsolescence

I come from a family steeped in tradition. Not like the Mayflower or anything, but what we do when. What we eat. How we celebrate. All full of traditions.

One of the traditions we have is that on Black Friday, the kids and I build gingerbread houses.

Once Sprout and I went to a fancy gingerbread decorating event at a fancy schmancy bakery. And that was way fun. But the next year, when we tried to go back, the fancy schmancy bakery had gone belly up (the nerve). There we were, wandering the streets of Downingtown wondering what we were to do to fill the gaping tradition void (for the tradition that had been started only the year before).

Luckily our wandering led us to a store with Gingerbread House kits. And that has been our traditional mode of gingerbread house construction for lo these many years.

This year, we were a little late on getting the houses built. We were busy doing stuff like this. That's Sprout sitting in Tony Romo's locker. Eat your heart out Jessica Simpson! Tater and our favorite Texan are sitting in Jason Witten's locker. How fun is that?

They didn't actually sit there all week. But we were traveling home from Dallas on Black Friday and, strangely, Southwest isn't big on building Gingerbread Houses during the flights.

But today we finally had some time and went to Target (oh, Target...how I love you) where we purchase two of these fine Gingerbread House kits ($9.99 each).

With...wait for it...premade icing!

Now, if you have no experience with the powdered Royal Icing that usually comes in these kits, that may seem like no big deal.

But, really...big deal. Last year I attempted to use spray icing. I do not recommend this. Too squishy. Too slide-y.

The pre-made icing was an excellent upgrade to the already convenient nature of the kit. So convenient in fact that my darling children decided that, after the initial construction phase, they did not need me to help.

Sniff. I am not needed. I'll be over here feeling sorry for myself. Or, maybe taking pictures.

Sprout was carefully doling out her candies. Attempting to use as few as possible without me noticing her evil scheme to have lots of leftovers to eat.

I'm on to you...
She was also trying to watch Star Wars while building. Multi-tasking with frosting can be trouble!

This guy has trouble written all over him. Or maybe that's frosting. Definitely frosting.

I think the end results were quite festive. This one here is Tater's. The one at the top is Sprout's. I did manage to get her to put most of the candy on - but it wasn't easy!

The tradition carries on. Despite my apparent obsolescence.

We did have an unfortunate incident with some roof slippage on Tater's house. And I was summoned to help with the repairs - so I guess I do still have some role to play. Whew!

Next year I am going to break out the spray icing again so there will be lots of repairs for me to help with. Gotta stay relevant!