Gingerbread Houses 2012

I love that our little family is developing some traditions that we enjoy doing year to year.  One of these is having Koen and Delia make "gingerbread" houses.  This year Tavin and Huxley got to try the project too.  Also, since the big kids are now in school every day we had to get together on the weekend, so it made for a great excuse to spend a whole morning together, moms, dads, big kids and little brothers.  Hilary, Alex, Huck and D arrived around 10am and the kids went right to work.  Here are the frames Doug had fun building with Koen yesterday all set up waiting for the kids.

Here are the builders.  Koen and Delia are intent.  Tav and Huck are a little perplexed on what on earth is expected of them!

Hilary and I were pretty hands on with the little guys.  Here's Tav trying to pick up a piece of candy to decorate the house without getting any of the frosting glue on his hands.  That's my boy!

And here's his bummed out look when he sees he did indeed get messy. =(

The big kids were almost entirely self-building.  They were great with the project.  They loved it and were very intent on their building plans.  The activity took them almost an hour!

After the houses were complete (well, in terms of when the kids decided they were done), the kids broke out into free playtime and we adults got to chat it up while Doug finished cooking our delicious brunch.  He made an amazing frittata, the yummiest potatoes I've ever had, we had a bowl of fruit and I had made pumpkin spice muffins with honey walnut cream cheese frosting.  Yeah, it was a good meal.  Koen and Delia got to sit at their own table (they were pretty proud of it).

It's become a tradition to celebrate Tavin's birthday (coming up on Monday!) with the Lackners (they are just the best of friends that they enjoy giving Tavin some special attention for his big day), so at the end of the meal we stuck 3 candles in Tav's muffin and sang him "Happy Birthday."  He was so cute and shy about it.  Then he tried his best to blow out the candles.

Big brother had to come and help. He was more than willing!

After the kids were finished eating, they went back to playing.  Tavin and Huck did an amazing job playing together in the living room.  And Koen and D were happy up in the playroom.  Turns out they were playing "hotel."  That's what Koen said.  All I know is that the whole 3rd floor was jumbled, messy and a-clutter, but honestly I didn't care, the two of them played so well together, they had a whole story going and they were loving being together.  Right before Huck & D had to leave we did a little gift exchange (another little tradition).  I'm not one to get gifts for all our friends, but these special friends we've enjoyed having a little exchange with every year.  Just something simple, but the kids love the giving and getting of a little gift from their good friends.  We let them all open at once, so the pics aren't great!

After gifts we tried to get a picture of the 4 kiddos.  Tavin was kind of the issue in this attempt!

This was such a wonderful morning with our dear friends.  Merry Christmas Alex, Hilary, Delia and Huxley.  We love you!