Posted by
RepublicanEvangelist on Monday, December 22, 2008 2:16:44 AM
Spending pre-Christmas weekend with the family. It began in the traditional way, showing my father how to use the 16.25 remote controls that control his stereo, DVD player, VCR, cable box, television and the Mars Rover. The first hour was spent by me trying to figure it out and the remaining half an hour showing him. My family tradition involves everyone building gingerbread houses. We have been doing this at least twenty years and it is an activity we all enjoy. Over the years we have had as many as fifteen people and as few as ten. We do it at my sister's house now and my brother in law instead of my mother is making the frosting. Technically there is no ginger nor bread involved. In fact, since they are primarily for the enjoyment of the structural process, graham crackers are used instead. The concrete is peanut butter. We have determined that creamy works better but I prefer the taste of chunky. The first decision to make is either make a structurally sound, beautiful or tasty house. Generally the three are mutually exclusive. For my tastes, I would load up on the peanut butter and Reeses Pieces and skip pretty much everything else. The result would look like a mud hut in a third world country in an advertisement that involves a pitch to send money. Making a structurally sound house involves making a box. My brother prefers to leave the graham crackers inside the plastic packaging. This is cheating as far as I am concerned but there is no official rule board to rule on the matter so he gets away with it. The result of the box method is often a house that looks like one of those Soviet designed structures that could be a housing complex or a prison. My house looked like a shanty town dwelling basically. If the gingerbread man was very very very impoverished, this is where he might live. My son wasn't interested until he caught the candy angle and realized daddy didn't mind him eating some of the construction material while making the slum dwelling. His enthusiasm increased dramatically at that point. We went to look at the Christmas lights down the street in my sister's neighborhood and boy was I humbled
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32730061@N06/3127727802/ ,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32730061@N06/3126896237/ . Remember, this is my house
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32730061@N06/3054821988/ or was before the passing of the snow globe. Here they have two houses that have synchronized music to dancing lights, lights that can be seen by the international space station, lights that are singularly responsible for global warming if it existed. Speaking of global warming, I know many Canadians are obsessed with global warming and are ACTUALLY trying to stop it. If global warming is real, Canada would be like Miami Beach. Instead, for some reason, Canadians want Canada to remain the freezing cold place it is for 4-6 months a year. If I were living in Canada I would be belching out as much CO2 as I could to heat up the global thermostat. Anyway, it is nice that people still decorate their homes for Christmas.
Here are some examples of the "gingerbread" houses:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32730061@N06/3126892931/ ,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32730061@N06/3126887867/ ,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32730061@N06/3127717544/ and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32730061@N06/3127719196/
The one that looks like gingerbread man's hut or tool shed is mine. The one that looks like a meteor hit it, is my brother in law's who insisted there is video footage to prove his 2 year old smashed the roof in.