Gingerbread houses.

Chip made the gingerbread dough from the recipe in the book shown here. I saw that it was available for purchase at amazon.com for about $5.99 a couple of days ago. There are templates for the houses we made and some for trees too- which we've made in previous years. My own opinion is that this recipe is easy and tasty- as compared to the Martha Stewart one we made a couple of years ago. Her recipe has some black pepper in it and none of my kids really liked that savory flavor burst.

All that to say I will try to post the recipe for the houses and frosting here. But only if I can squeeze that into my free time. =) Otherwise I recommend that you google gingerbread houses and just take a chance on making one that sounds good/easy to you!

This whole gingerbread-baking tradition is one that was passed down to us from Chip's side of the family. Over the years, his mom, Grandma Karen, has always made elaborate houses. She instilled the love of baking the dough from scratch into both Chip and me, and is to credit for the tradition we now are carrying on with our kids.

Teagan got in on decorating a big house with Grandma the year I was pregnant with Wyndham and we were just moving/settling into our home in Gaylord, MI. She helped make our home smell and 'feel' like Christmas that year, when likely I would have just done the minimum if it had been up to me.

The next Christmas was the first Christmas season without Teagan, and we were able to be 'home' in Minnesota with family for a bit just before Christmas. (We actually spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at the American Club in Kohler Wisconsin and tried to relax and enjoy the day despite our pain and loss that year. I could write a lengthy post on how we came to do that, but I'll skip it for now and finish writing about gingerbread houses.) So, we were back in Minnesota and thankfully, Grandma Karen still had the ability to bake and decorate gingerbread houses. In fact, I think that was the year she spent about 3 days baking all the pieces- she outdid herself with the big houses and massives amounts of candy! Brock was able to get in on the decorating and I think that was the longest he actually sat at a table for us in months. Leave it to Grandma and candy to help him through some of his post-traumatic stress issues. =)

Ever since then, it just feels 'right' to make houses together. Whether at home in Minnesota or at home here in Michigan. Our family has found that baking and making them on Thanksgiving Day/weekend is a fun activity to do together and it sort of kicks off the Christmas season in our home.

The kids had a really great time with the decorating this year. They were all at such capable ages to do their own designing and they even listened to our instructions about how much of the candy they could eat. I think we could almost call that a Christmas miracle!