Thanks for the “are you still alive?” emails and messages! Still here. Still hiding (although I have emerged a few times to buy food and check the mail).

The Boy has shingles (!!) (I thought only old men got shingles. He said,”Great. What’s next?” I replied, “Piles. Then your prostate will pack it in.”
We’ve been serenading him with “Shingle Bells, Shingle Bells, Shingle all the way!” He doesn’t laugh, but we think it’s hilarious.

Ali asked if I would make a gingerbread house for Christmas. I made one as a surprise for the kids a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, because teenagers go to bed so late, to make it a surprise required that I be baking gingerbread in the middle of the night. It was worth it. It was a cute house and everyone loved it. This years? I’ll let Ali describe the Debacle…

we made a Gingerbread tent because… here’s the story:

so, we started out fine with the gingerbread before mum realised it wasn’t all cooked properly. so we shoved them back in the oven for a bit then took them out to cool.

after they had cooled for a bit we started building it. it looked pretty cool and stable. but just after dinner dad stomped by creating an earthquake so the gingerbread house collapsed, one wall breaking into 3 pieces.

so then mum tried icing them back together again (the remaining walls) except they began to slide apart.

then we decided to shove toothpicks in it to hold it together. the only problem was, we had one wall made of three pieces tooth-picked together. it looked really stupid and by now there is icing everywhere.

then mum decided to try putting the roof on, but it wasn’t staying on. so we shoved MORE toothpicks in the damn thing to hold the roof on. it didn’t work.

the icing was sliding off the roof and landing on the floor (which was VERY sticky by now.)

During all of this (”this” as in mum’s attempts to keep it a house) i was laughing so hard my chest was hurting and i couldn’t breathe. it just looked hilarious.

then mum brought out the knife and cut two triangles out of the side walls and made them the front and back of a tent. of course there had to be another problem.

we had made a very pretty door. it was too big for the tent, so we had to cut the bottom off : (
it was sad.

then we shoved the door on with icing and then mum squirted icing along the top to make it look like snow. it looks like she took her anger out on it with an icing-gun.

so now we have a Gingerbread tent, with five jelly-baby people out front, a red frog lolly on the door with a handle looking like a white poo (you know, a swirly kinda one) and a black cat lolly (licorice) on the roof of the tent. so the peoples home looks like a tent-house…. thing. and to top it all off, mum attacked it with hundreds and thousands in an attempt to cover up how bad it looked. it made it worse.

There are no photos that can do justice to how truly hideous it is, so here’s a pic of last year’s tree instead

Happy Christmas, Bloggers One and All!!
Peace, joy and boundless love to you all.
May next year’s gingerbread house be more successful.