The Brief Gingerbread House of '07

Gingerbread houses still make me twitchy. If you don't know why, you probably haven't read this post. And yet, here's another year where I found myself buying a gingerbread house for my kids to make. We made a treasure hunt of it, hiding the house out in our complex, then giving the kids GPS clues to find it (this was partly an attempt to make geocaching more exciting for Megan, because right now she's not down with this being a family hobby).

It started out ok, after the hiccup of realizing we needed to make our own icing. We knew we couldn't keep it up for long (see ant post of previous day). But we didn't realize how not long that would be. See for yourself.



Looks good so far doesn't it? No apparent structural faults.


But what's this? It appears the roof is beginning to cave in, and the side is starting to buckle. Must be the excess of icing making it soggy, or perhaps the weight of way too much sugar.


As I was writing the word "condemned" on the side, the roof gave in, making my statement rather obvious.

And then it collapsed completely. That lasted all of about 10 minutes. But the kids had fun and will eat as much of it as I let them (not much) later. Why do I do this to myself?

Merry Christmas!

What do you do when you're short on time, it's raining constantly outside, and you need to take a Christmas picture? You go to Spotlight, buy two and a half meters of black fabric and make your own photo studio is what you do! Or at least it's what we did. I did several test shots with just the kids - as you can see, they got a little wacky. I like the last picture of me better, but if you look closely (and I always do) you can see the effects of me leaning sideways over the camera to check the shot before jumping in - my hair is flipped the wrong way over my head. I didn't realize that until I was editing the pictures. I subjected my poor family to a second round of shots and the second to last shot in the post was the one was the best we got.

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!

Well, we had to get a second set of lights and borrow a saw to hack off the bottom of it, but our tree finally looks and smells like a real honest to goodness Christmas tree! I have never seen the appeal in making a tree all matching and beautiful. To me, it's all about family and memories, and I could tell you a story about every one of these ornaments.

Here's the view of our window display. You can't see very well the fake snow we sprayed in the window per the kid's request. Now we just need a few more gifts under that tree.

I decided when I came to Singapore to start over with my Christmas decorating. I want to collect nativities from other countries. This is one Erik gave me a few weeks ago. It was hand carved in the Philippines. I think it might be my favorite.

This was sent to us from some friends in China. No, Jesus, Mary and Joseph probably weren't Asian, but they weren't white either! When I consider that God is every color and every culture and every language, it tells me how great He is.

This is from right here in Singapore, but I suppose technically you could claim it's from Malaysia, because it's made from cinnamon trees grown there. They hand make these at Tay Guan Heng, up in Ang Mo Kio. If you live in Singapore and haven't been there, it is a must see! I have a list of creations I want to buy there in the future. They are the nicest guys and it's fascinating to watch them work.

I told my mom I wanted to collect nativities and she said, "I think you should go open your Christmas present from us." It was this nativity from Chile! Very fun - now we're truly global. I'm opting not to show you our Playmobil nativity, but that's here too. If you're traveling to another country and see a unique nativity, would you pick it up for us? Ethan keeps asking me why we have so many "activity sets." He also wants to know where I've stashed all the baby Jesus figures (they'll come out at Christmas). Merry Christmas from the Butz house!

Our Christmas Tree

It is a running joke in the Brenna family that I hate Christmas tree shopping. I may have described it before, but our memories have morphed into one recurring episode: We choose to hunt for a tree on the coldest day of the year. I am underdressed as usual. My parents choose a new Christmas tree farm that promises the best trees. When we venture into the lot, we discover one tree that we all love, but my mom insists we must look around to make sure it is the right one. Then my family starts to take sadistic pleasure in my negative attitude by throwing snow at me. My mom finds a "perfect" tree at the other end of the lot, but by the time we gather everyone together to assess it, someone else is cutting it down. Defeated, we go back and cut down the first tree we found.

It probably only happened like this once or twice, but I gained such a reputation that when we flew back for Christmas in 2003 and I was in a friend's wedding, my mom said, "Ok, so we'll take the kids to get the tree while you're at the wedding," to which I replied, "You can't get the tree without me!" No one was more surprised than me at that statement.

Well, our Christmas tree outing was quite different here. I might grow to like it. Our artificial tree that we purchased in Asia 8 years ago for the bargain price of $12 finally bit the dust last year. We decided to spring (and I mean spring) for a real one. The kids were thrilled. We went to one of the nurseries on Thompson Road where trees stood in rank according to their height. Even within height (we chose a 5-6') there was quite a variation. I think we got the best of the bunch.

Erik was a bit out of sorts (and if you know Erik, you know things have to be seriously wrong for that to happen) because the tree stand we bought leaked. He drove back and got them to replace it, and now our beautiful tree is filling the front window. This is the first year in Singapore that we've had space for a tree this size! I'll post decorated tree pictures as soon as I get my camera's battery charger back from its trip to a friend's house, and after we get more lights. You can never have enough lights.