The DELIGHTS of Gingerbread House construction

It's December. I had my niece and nephew for the afternoon. I thought it would be nice to make a SIMPLE Gingerbread house. You know, the pre-baked kind. No need to get all Martha Stewart and whip out the gingerbread recipe, the cutters, the icing, and so on. No...one kit, two kids and some light Christmas music in the background.

Before beginning, we set out for some lunch to bone up for the afternoon. Some coloring while we await the burgers, dogs and shakes:

Of course we had to top the meal off with a little ice cream:

Then we insisted the artwork be displayed for future diners to enjoy. And the waiter complied. Yes, I did give him a nice tip for this little favor:

both pictures, taped to the back wall for generations of other children to admire.

It was now time to "get to getting" and head home to undertake the gingerbread activity. You probably can't read the circled portion of the box below...it says "EASY TO ASSEMBLE".

Already stressed, I handed the instructions over to DP, who told us it was simple construction and to stop crying already:

Meanwhile, in FULL VIEW of DP, this girl was sucking down one of DP's family!

Nevertheless, DP chose to make sure everything went well in preparing the icing:

and the boy helped out as well:

Well, we started to assemble the house, and after waiting for 10 minutes for the icing to dry, the boy suddenly realized something:

and so we started over:

A mere 20 minutes later...and with the help of several leftover cans of olives and cranberry sauce (and a jar of peanut butter to boot)...the house took shape and HELD ITSELF TOGETHER:

and then the REAL work began:

a lot of icing, a lot of candy pieces, and a little luck helped us along:

Suddenly, we heard a crash in the background and found that Santa Claus had himself a little old accident in the village:

The kids were quite artistic and I was happy to sit back and watch their work take shape:

Check out those design lines! That window frame!

Finished Product, side one (girls' side)

Finished Product, side two (boy's side)

a daring "Aeriel shot":

A beautiful girl holding a beautiful gingerbread house: a not so beautiful kitchen:

On to some quality Lego time while awaiting parental pick up:

I amazed and stunned them with my ability to create a candy cane out of Legos. Well, OK...they laughed at me and told me it was lame:

While I was busy crafting the candy cane....

OK, fine, they are obviously better at Legos than me. Here's a parting shot as they prepared to head home: