Holidays

I am so GRATEFUL this holiday season! Here are a couple pictures from our wonderful thanksgiving feast with the Barrett family. Heidi and Gabe treated us to a short lip sync concert after we ate, the subject of which was a parody of the gut pain I experienced in Jerusalem.  It was very hilarious and I laughed a lot!  Wish I could get Jared to get up and dance like Gabe does, ha ha. So grateful for family, I hit the jackpot with the best parents and siblings in the whole world.

Dad never leaves the kitchen, always cleaning something

Carpenter family lip syncers

Jared in a post-thanksgiving feast coma

selfies with Great grandma Rappleye!

I made another gingerbread house this year. It took me seven days to complete, my kitchen was a chaotic art studio all that time, and a lot of other things got put on the back burner for that week.  Let me tell you putting up the christmas decorations seemed like a breeze compared to the work this gingerbread house required. But its fun to create and be artistic once in a while.

Step 1: Creating the floor plan and baking the gingerbread panels

Step two: decorating the panels

Step 3: making frosting and erecting the walls

Step 4: accessorizing the interior base floor

I later added a little clear straw with frosting that looked like a cup of milk, it was too cute!

Step 5: Taping lights to the ceiling/floor divider and erecting second floor walls

Step 6: decorating interior of upper floor

Step 7: cutting roof panels, taping lights to ceiling, frosting roof, adding chimney

.Step 8: finishing touches to exterior, frost and decorate the yard

All done! (Fiora's and Weston's ginberbread house on sides)

The kids just love this whole process and have to make a little house of their own while I do my big one, that really added a lot of work to my load since I had to make three more floor plans and panels and frosting for them, but I loved their enthusiasm.  I was pretty burnt out of gingerbreading by the end!  Here are a few pictures of Savanna's ginger bread house and her preferred art form--fingernail polishing.

Savanna doing holiday nail art!

Isn't that a cute snow man she made!