Gingerbread Houses

Dusty has a tradition in his family of decorating gingerbread houses at Christmas time. I have no idea how far this tradition goes back but we have been doing it ever since I can remember. We all get into it, parents and kids alike, sometimes going with a red and green theme, sometimes thinking up something special (Dusty's brother Shane made his house an In-N-Out burger joint this year...) it's always lots of mess and lots of fun! The kids go first and they each get to decorate a train car that usually sits under Grandma's tree but since their 'house' isn't finished yet, the kids each get to take home their trains this year.



If you know Dusty at all, you'll know that he is right in the middle of helping the kids with their trains. He walks around with a tube filled with icing and goes to whichever kid needs him at the moment. He helps the little ones with general icing so they can put their candy on their train and he helps the older ones with decorative fixtures like teaching them how to make icicles.





Here is where you will find Dusty's mom. She is in the kitchen mixing up batch after batch of icing. As you can imagine, we go through a lot.



Some of the kids got a little out of control and decided that the icing looked better on their faces than on the trains... is that Rudolph?






Here is our train. Mady decorated the engine, Breckyn and Kaden had the two middle cars, and Ashlyn got to decorate the cabaoose!



Here is the house Dusty and I made. We decided in honor of Mia, our new dog, that we would make a dog house. And since she loves to eat socks, there is even a sock in one of the piles of poop in the yard... we had to make it realistic of course.