Gingerbread House

After music class yesterday we came home and worked on our annual gingerbread house! Katie asked to work on it somewhere near the tree, and I chose the coffee table so that she could reach easily. She loved working on everything: helping with the icing, placing all of the candies (I did help with a few, but most of this is her work.

She was having so much fun that, at one point, she looked at me and said, "Mommy, you are my very best friend!"

When I would compliment her on a candy place, she would put her hands into little excited and pleased fists.

The gingerbread house building begins...

Placing a green gummy candy....

Working intently...

Our finished house... She loves playing with it and going in to eat candies off of it every once in awhile.

Sitting by the tree looking at our work, I said, "I wish it could be Christmastime all year!"

Katie replied, "You're part elf!" Then she elaborated: "I'm not part elf. You are part elf!"

We have been watching the film Elf, so she has some context for her remarks, and she knows that elves love Christmas and making toys and decorating trees and eating candy.

It is especially humorous because my friends and I have an ongoing joke that in my senior high school picture I look elfin. My friend Steve even made a Lucky Charms cereal box with my face on it. Maybe I am part elf?

When it got dark, Katie and I bundled up and took a wagon ride down the block to Amie and Boppa's to see their newly decorated tree and their Christmas lights. Boppa wound white and red lights around their lightpole this year. When Katie saw it from down the street, she called out, "Candy cane!!!!!!!!!!!" And then she said, "It's ginormous! It's ginormous!!!"

Yes, ginormous. She really used that word. I love my daughter!

All bundled up with the snowflake blanket and a friend.

Looking up at the ginormous candy cane.

Admiring Boppa's tree made of lights on the front lawn.