Conquering Gingerbread Houses with the Hood

Our little Whoville neighborhood probably already wins the award, hands down, for most involved and most activities. We have some nice families who are generously willing to expend much time and effort to plan lots of fun things for the rest of us (who are generously willing to soak up all the activities planned through others' time and effort.)

We already have the neighborhood picnic with climbing wall and ice cream truck, the halloween party, the neighborhood campout, the ladies' cocktail holiday shin dig, the neighborhood ski club, and now, the children's gingerbread decorating party. (What will they come up with next?) In addition to all that we have actually involved ourselves with, the neighborhood also has monthly bunco for the ladies (I declined), monthly happy hours for couples (we declined) and seasons tickets to Shea's theater (also declined.) Yes, it is quite an involved neighborhood.

We had a great time at the gingerbread house decorating party. The boys split decorating two houses, managing to get a million and one different types of candy onto each house. Cotton candy, candy canes, chiclets, oh my. It was a whole lot of candy. After pizza and juice boxes, each child had their picture taken with their gingerbread creation to take home in a personalized frame and a holiday themed goodie bag. (I could never manage to pull anything like this off. Never.)

The houses are beautifully full of candied goodness and are still standing. Very much unlike the ones we attempted at home last year, that caved into several pieces under the weight of all our decorating.