Gingerbread Houses

We made gingerbread houses this year. We enjoyed it so much, we hope to make it a new family tradition. Justin even made one!

Pre-decorating

With three houses, I feel like this could be an episode of House Hunters on HGTV.

House #1 The Spacious, yet Unfinished Two-Story.

House #2 The Cozy Bungalow

House #3 The Updated Cottage

Can you guess who made each house? :)

If you are observant you might have noticed our houses are missing frosting "seams." We used hot glue! If you think that's cheating, you should try to make a gingerbread house with a two year old's attention span!

We learned one lesson for next year: make the houses AFTER dinner! Ava was downing as much candy as she could!

I thought we might have to "display" the houses on top of the TOP cupboards to keep Ava from eating candy off them, but she has done surprisingly well.

Christmas Tree

This year we went to a tree farm and cut down our Christmas tree. Not quite as exciting as hiking through three feet of snow in the mountains like my family used to do it, but this is as close to the "real" experience as we get! I prefer the no-snow factor. :)

Ready to cut down the tree!

It was cold, but he was still happy!

Ava helped decorate

Tyler's contribution

 "Ta-Da!"

 What our tree looked like for one night before the kids un-decorated the bottom half!

At our ward Christmas Party.

Stitches

On Saturday, December 8th we visited the emergency room for the first time as parents. With how crazy Ava is we are surprised she made it this long without a visit! We are glad it wasn't too serious.

Here she is, not sure what awaits her, still happy in the ER.

She was standing on the side of the tub when she fell and split her chin. We debated about taking her in, thinking they might just stick a band-aid on it. We are glad we took her. It doesn't look too bad in this picture, but it was really deep. 

 This is how we spent most of the 2 hrs in the ER, watching Cinderella on Dad's phone.

 They put some numbing liquid on her chin and she did really well. She only cried quietly, and she held still. (Justin and a large male nurse were holding her down...so I'm not sure she could move if she wanted to!)

After we left the hospital we took her straight to the store to buy Dora band-aids and ice cream. That seemed to make things better. :)