Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Gingerbread Disaster

24th December 08, Christmas Eve

Our Christmas Eve was quite an interesting mix of hectic rush, on-the-fly planning, cooking, cleaning, laughing, crying, eating, sorting, wrapping, and perhaps with a bit of luck, a light touch of sleeping in the near future.

After making a few quick runs to the commissary, post office, and BX/PX on Panzer, we finally settle back home to have some lunch and let the merriment of Christmas Eve begin. As some of you may know my wife is originally from Wales and grew up all her life here and thereabouts in the UK. Because of that she has some unique traditions that she follows during the holidays. One of these traditions is on Christmas Eve the family gets together and for tea (dinner) we have nothing but snack type foods, chocolates, candies, or whatever tickles our particular fancy for the night. We also watch loads of Christmas (or at least with Christmas in them) movies to psych ourselves up for the big day. But before we tackle the huge spread we had laid out before ourselves, we stopped to have a few quick family photos.

As most people with small children can tell you, taking family photos is not always an easy thing. Especially with a grumpy/hungry/bored almost two year old. I submit exhibits A and B above.
After that bit of hilarity, we all get ready and tuck into our feast of tasty goodness. Rhys does get a leg up on us though, or rather a hand up on us, and almost completely up-ends all the food on the floor with his hasty attempt to grab a marshmallow.
Disaster somewhat avoided, we all stuff ourselves silly.

After a good hour or so of eating, taking photos, laughing and talking, we begin........Gingerbread Disaster 2008....*cue dramatic music*
So, at this point we've broken out our gingerbreadmanmaking kit and Em notices that the recipe calls for honey, something we don't normally keep in the house. After some searching on the Internet, we decide to replace said honey with granulated sugar and water. While this allows us to continue making the gingerbread man dough, it does make the consistency of the dough a little bit different than expected. Nevertheless, we add some flour, the dough, alot of running around the kitchen with dough all over our hands, plus a vacuum for clean-up, and we get four perfectly awesome looking gingerbread men, or rather three gingerbread men and one gingerbread woman.
And don't worry, the gingerbread persons are not actual likenesses of us, rather, they seem to be what my wife and everyone else finds humorous, except for me. I really don't look like that in person, do I?




Anyway, our Christmas Eve ended with the traditional donning of the Christmas sleeping gear, and the setting out of goodies for Santa and the reindeer, which of course, Rhys tried to eat, as you can see below....


And guess who I found Mummy kissing?
-----Merry Christmas everyone, hope you enjoy the holidays!

1 comment:

The Letteer Family said...

Fun! What a day! We need to make some of our own Christmas traditions as well. Have a nice night you guys! Get some sleep!