A New Christmas Tradition

Christmas traditions are hard to establish when you're constantly moving. This year, we're home, but next year who knows where we'll be. We could be in Nebraska, hanging out with the Grandparents, travelling across the country to some other state. I try to cling to traditions that we can do whether we're on the road, visiting family or at home.

A new tradition we started this year was a Gingerbread Tree. People do gingerbread houses, but we couldn't find a decent kit. In hind-sight, that was okay. Little Monster is waaay too little to decorate a house, but a tree is right up his alley. I found a kit that contained a bunch of gingerbread star cookies and frosting mix, got everything out that we needed and made sure to get Little Monster all ready for some possibly messy kitchen fun.


I'm not sure he's excited. What do you think? We laid out our star cookies so that we would be ready to stack them. I laid the first cookie down, gluing it to the foil-covered plate and turned my back to grab another. What would any two year old boy do?


He grabbed it off the plate and ate it. It ended up being a good thing. He "helped" by munching down on a probably-stale pre-baked gingerbread cookie while I attempted to assemble the tree with the frosting. It leans a little. But then, it was supposed to be assembled by a two-year-old. Once the tree was mostly together, we decided to add a little 'green' and some decorations to our tree.



Of course he took some time to taste test the little balls that went all over the tree. And he decided that the Star didn't go on top, it went at the bottom with the presents. Fine with me, it was his tree.

The finished (crooked but cute) Product:


The kid when he was done:

You can tell by the green on his face that he had fun tasting everything. And if you look in the bottom left corner, you'll notice I was a very nice mommy and left a few of the candy balls for him to eat when we were done.

I was very glad that we hadn't attempted a house. I don't think that would have went nearly as well. The whole experience was wonderful. I also had to get over the fact that the tree wasn't going to look beautiful like the ones on the box, because Little Monster was going to be putting it together. It isn't about the end product, it's about the fun getting there. It did take me a few minutes to get to that point as we were scrambling for water, mixing the icing, and getting things ready. In the future, I'll be more prepared for disasters and laughter and be more willing to let things get a little crazy. I'll also make sure I have EVERYTHING out and ready to go before I let Little Monster in the kitchen so that he's not dumping water on the floor while I search for the mixer beaters.

Thanks Little Monster for a great time. I loved laughing because you were sneaking cookies, taste testing the candy, and making general messes. I hope that you'll enjoy doing stuff like this with me every year. Merry Christmas and thanks again. I am excited to continue this tradition year after year -- at Grandma's house, in our fifth wheel as we travel from duty station to duty station, or in our home. I love you.