The Gingerbread House

Another Christmas tradition that has changed.

Our church has a wonderful tradition of making gingerbread houses together. We have a member that has taken on the job of coordinating the efforts to make the small simple houses on round cardboard bases. She has teams that make the dough and cut it into the proper shapes and then they use frosting to hold the pieces together. After the children's Christmas program every year people gather and pool together the candy that everyone shares to decorate their houses. It is a wonderful event.

We have gone a couple of years and the first years were fine.  We have great pictures and great memories. This was back when Haley's Big Sis did the decorating and Haley was small enough that we could just hold her, or walk around with her. When Haley got older something happened.

This beautiful event was all just too much for Haley, she has never done very well with crowds anyway.


I think the combination two events one right after the other without a meal in between didn't help. Haley was hungry and the only thing to eat was the candy. That is what she ate. We tried to get her to stop, but then she started spiraling into melt-down mode and since Big Sis wasn't done decorating the house we stayed and let her eat more.

Can you say Sugar Rush?

Then when we got home with the house she still wanted to eat it. I wanted to use it as decoration for a while, but it became too much of a temptation and had to have an early demise.

So we don't participate in this particular holiday tradition any more.