An Evening of Gingerbread Fun!

Last Christmas Hannah and I decorated her first gingerbread house.  Norma was there with 2 of her grandchildren and we immediately knew that a new tradition had been born.

This year we booked our evening more than a month ago and happily doubled the size of our group.  Here are our little chefs!  (It was fun to see how they’d changed in just one short year.  Last year it was the adults who put names on their chef’s hats and this year they were all able to do it themselves.  Such talented little chefs!)

Chef Hannah contemplating her design before we began.  (Or, dreaming of how many candies she would enjoy while making her house!)

Hannah’s cousin Chef Makenna joined us for her first but not last gingerbread creation

Chef Katelyn who was returning with her brother for our 2nd year of gingerbread excitement!

Chef Nathan who was designing an awesome house!

And our final 2 new chefs were the adorable Chef Alyssa and

Chef Maddie

We also brought along the too cute for words Junior Chef Kallen!  He wasn’t too interested this year but next year – look out!!  I love how my sweet little nephew chose the perfect outfit to wear for our festive evening.

It’s fun to see how different each house is in spite of all having same decorations to work with. 

This year we also brought along more parents too so we all shared great family times together!

When we sat there sharing this awesome family time together I couldn’t help but get a little teary at one point.  Who knew when Norma and I first met at work 25 years ago when she and her hubby had 2 daughters, that 25 years later our families would dovetail together like this and be sharing such wonderful memory making times together!  Over my career I’ve worked with hundreds of people but Norma and I share a friendship that has only grown over the years and I will never, ever forget how our friendship grew to it’s deepest level on a beautiful sunny day in Hunan, China on Nov 2, 2009.

As is normal when creating gingerbread houses there was lots of sampling to be done by young and ummm…not as young alike!

Eventually Hannah could be found eating the icing right out of the bag.  Hehe!

You can tell by this pic of my camera that Hannah was not the only one with sticky fingers!

Hannah’s finished masterpiece!  I think it’s beautiful and she did a great job!

Our sugared up little chefs with their finished masterpieces!

We’re already said that we’ll do this together again next year!  Lots of fun and the best part is we leave the mess at the store!  Woo hoo!