Gingerbread Festival

A couple weekends ago, it was one of those day. You know .... one of the days where you feel like if you spend another minute in your house you will go crazy. So, Paul asked me what I wanted to do to get out of the house. I wasn't sure what to do, and besides it was snowing. I thought how dumb I was and should probably just tough it out and finish cleaning out the storage room and the garage. Well, my husband being the sweetie that he is, got on the internet and googled things to do in Utah. He stumbled upon the Gingerbread Festival down at Thanksgiving Point. Perfect. Something to do AWAY from the house. So we bundled the kids up and braved the snow to go see some gingerbread houses. It was SO MUCH fun!!! For the price of your admission you got to see all the houses that had been donated by local school classes, boyscout & girlscout troops and other groups. You also got a cookie to decorate, a cup of hot chocolate, free Amber alert ID cards for your kids, face painting, stories by Mrs. Claus, a candy cane and some musical entertainment. The deal with the gingerbread house festival is that groups all over the Salt Lake Valley donate houses for people to bid on, and all the proceeds go to the PTA (a worthy cause I might add). Since Paul and I were new to this whole thing, we didn't really decide to bid on a house until the very end, which by then we had both chosen our favorites (which of course weren't the same). Well, once again Paul proved to be much sweeter than I am, and he let me bid on the house I wanted. The next Monday I got a call that we had won the house!! We had to drive back down there Monday night between 8:00-10:00pm to pick it up, but I was pretty excited. I had to put the house up high for now, because Carson kept asking why we couldn't eat it. I hope that it makes it past Christmas. This was a really fun event, and I will definately be looking forward to this again next year!

I'm pretty sure Carson overdid it with the decorating!!

Jaedyn just wanted to eat the frosting!

Kelsi and Paul were both very intent on getting their cookies just right.

Pretty amazing what you can do with some gingerbread and a little frosting!

This is the house I wanted (and of course being a spoiled brat, this is the one we got).

This is the house Paul really wanted - I did really like the lights on this house, but not enough to change my mind about the other house!