It was an ordinary day. And, I must admit I was in the wrong. You know how hard that is to do? And, I must admit that I thought I knew better. And, as you may have guessed by now, I didn't. But how many people really read the directions when they open something? Especially when they did the same thing the year before and it worked out fine. That should be "almost" the same thing the year before. And, that is exactly why I should have read the directions. Last year, in the evening after most everyone had left, I helped my three grandkids make gingerbread houses. Even wrote a story about how neat they turned out. We celebrate Thanksgiving in LDub's house on Saturday after Thanksgiving, since all our children and grandchildren are able to attend on that day. After everyone leaves except the grandkids and our daughter, who has come from Maryland and happens to be the mother of two of the grandkids, I set up the table and break out the gingerbread kits I had purchased at WalMart. This year I decided that it may be neat to make gingerbread Christmas trees so I brought out the boxes and placed them on the table. You could see the excitement in my grandkids eyes. I helped each one open their box and place all the parts in front of them on the long table. Each box contained 14 pieces of gingerbread, pre-shaped in star-shaped form and in graded sizes, a package of colored round sugar pieces for ornaments, a package with three sugar gifts and one star for the top, two pastry tubes, and two packages of icing in colors of green and white. Now, last year the houses we made only had one bag of icing and it was white in color. So, I just assumed that we started with the white. My daughter decided to help me at this point, since she could see I was getting rather frazzled. She mixed the white icing with water as directed and we filled the pastry tubes with icing. Gave one to each grandkid and they started by putting a circle of icing on the biggest piece of gingerbread and placed the next biggest piece on top of that and so forth until all pieces were used and it looked like a tree. The icing acted as "paste" to hold the pieces together. Seems easy so far? Well my grandson was halfway done when he called me over and said he was running out of icing. Seems he was pushing the icing out both the tip and the rear end of his pastry tube. White icing all over his shirt, down the front of him onto his pants and shoes and the new carpet we had installed a few months ago. I know, what idiot would have his young grandkids do this on carpet. Now my wife, Carol, joined in and disrobed him on the spot and took him to the sink for clean-up, while my daughter cleaned the icing off the carpet. Me, I grabbed the left over icing and finished the tree and then grabbed the bottle of wine and took a big swig. Next, the green icing. By now Carol was asking me why we didn't put the tree together with the green icing as it was on the picture on the box. Well, we didn't, because I didn't read the directions, so we just had to direct our attention to the green for the decorations. Then they added the colored pieces on the branches as lights, the gifts around the base and star on the top. Boy did they look great! And to top all that off, the grandkids loved making them and thought they looked fantastic! They certainly didn't care about the icing. How forgiving they can be to their Tampah. By the time I cleaned up the mess and went to bed, I was totally exhausted and the wine bottle was empty. Knew I was going to sleep well! It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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Camille adding her star on top.
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Caden adding a colored ornament.
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Courtney getting ready to add the final touch.
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And LDub calling it quits for the night.
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