The "Having A Messy Good Time" Story

It was an ordinary day. Cleaning up the kitchen table. Got a little sticky last night when the grandkids and I worked on our gingerbread houses. About a week before Thanksgiving I came home from shopping for groceries for Thanksgiving dinner and showed my wife this really neat kit I got at the store. "You don't expect the kids to do that by themselves, do you?" she said after seeing the complexity of the stuff in the box. I guess I didn't! "You know how much of a mess that will be on Thanksgiving when they start that?" she continued. I guess I didn't! "They'll have icing all over the sofa," she said. "OK, I'll forget about it," I responded. Well, dinner ended and most everyone went home except Carol and me and our daughter Brynn and her two kids as well as my son Derek's son. So, three adults and three kids. "Why don't you get the gingerbread kit out now and help them make the houses?" Carol said to me. Why me? Too late. The grandkids heard her and were now all excited about the stuff I BOUGHT! The kit had 5 houses in it so they each could have one. I started cutting the first piece of gingerbread along the lines as indicated and ..... whoops. Now there are only 4 houses. Then I read the instructions and cut the rest as I was told to do in the instructions. Then the fun began. Opened one of two packets of frosting/glue and helped all of them to glue their houses together. Frosting everywhere and on everything as they tried to hold them together as the frosting set. We all washed up while the housed cured or set for an hour so the frosting could harden. Couldn't wait an hour! After half an hour we were back at the table with 5 packets of "stuff", ready to finish the houses. One packet had gummy green Christmas trees, one had colored things that looked like BBs, one had colored round candies that looked like paper punched pieces and one had colored things that looked like Jujubes. Remembered them from my childhood. The final packet had red frosting in it. Well, the only way to hold the candies on the gingerbread was with the other packet of white frosting as well as the new red packet of frosting. Boy did we have a mess!! But, they had the best time making the festive houses. I pitched in with suggestions and encouragement when things kept falling off the houses. Finally we were done and clean-up started. I told them to leave them on the table overnight to harden and we went to grab a snack before bedtime. Got up early the next morning to clean up the mess and had their houses waiting for them when they crawled out of bed. We wrapped them in bubble wrap for the trip to their homes. Haven't heard how they survived the car ride, but for this Christmas there will be no more gingerbread house making in LDub's kitchen. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - Top two photos show Caden's house, middle two show Camille's house, and the bottom two show Courtney's house.