The Great Gingerbread Village Fiasco of 2009

I was watching two of my friends' kids for a couple of days, so I had a total of five kids ranging from three to eight. Two of them were boys who aren't nearly as impressed with our Barbie collection as the girls usually are. At some point they cried boredom and what did I do? A saner person would have put a movie in the DVD player and pushed PLAY but what did Dione do? She said, “Who wants to build a gingerbread village!?!?!”

The words just came flying out of my mouth before I'd considered the consequences. I thought it would be easy actually. I thought it would be FUN! I had a kit after all. Five adorable little houses for five adorable little kids. FUN!

Five happy little voices were saying, “YAAAAAY!!!” and for that first glorious moment, I was thinking, I ROCK!

And then the fight broke out over who was gonna get which house. No problem. We'd draw numbers to see who got which house. Perfect! This was going to be FUN! Except for the adorable kid who got the stupid house they didn't want. But then, in an incredible act of generosity, adorable kid #2 offered to trade with adorable kid #1... unfortunately kid #2 got stuck with a house with broken pieces... and it went on and on like this. Nobody wanted to put their own house together, so I had five freaking adorable little houses to put together and five adorable children saying, “Make mine first, make mine first!!!”

When one of my friends called to say she was almost home and to let her know when to come pick up her daughter, I said, “Here's what I want you to do. Pull up in front of my house with the engine running... I'll jump in and you FLOOR IT!”

I then explained my gingerbread house insanity. I said, “We haven't even gotten to the decorating part yet but I know how it's gonna go. These kits... the box always says Lots of Icing and Candy but there never is. They don't factor in all the eating that goes on while the frazzled grown-up tries to get four walls to stick together and somehow hold up a roof. Five times. Pretty soon I'm gonna have five adorable kids completely wired on sugar trying to decorate five stupid, stupid adorable little houses and fighting over 14 gumdrops, six red hots and a candy cane to do it. What was I thinking?"My friend said, “I'm in front of your house. Come out here, I have something for you.”

Really? Hmm...Help had arrived. I went skipping out to her car wondering what she could possibly have for me. She started fishing around in her purse as I said, “Whatcha got for me? Ya got valium? Ya got prozac?”

She started laughing. “No, no... it's here, somewhere...”

“Whatcha got for me? Ya got vodka? Ya got a pitcher full of margaritas?”

“No. It's candy.”

“Candy? Oh chocolate? Okay it's not prozac but chocolate can solve a lot.”

“No, no, not chocolate,” she said, and then right before my eyes, she started pulling sealed packages of candy out of her purse. Not just any candy either. This candy was green, red and white. Candy that was born to live on a gingerbread house.

I said, "I swear to you, I'm not judging... But you have gingerbread house candy in your purse, why?"

She explained that a couple of days before she and her daughter had been to a gingerbread house decorating party and this was some of the leftover candy. She said, “Hold on, I think I've got frosting in here."

“Yeah umm. Seriously? Frosting in your purse? I love you. This just another prime example of why we're friends.”

She never did find the frosting. I know. Only a friend of mine could lose frosting in her purse. And it only made what happened twenty minutes later even more funny. I went back into the house to show off all the new candy. “Oh. But it's only to look at, adorable children! No eating!”

So then I went back to building five tiny little stupid houses while five adorable children dipped themselves in sprinkles. When my friend Wendy showed up to pick up Brandon and Jaden, I told her all about my gingerbread village fiasco and then added that you'll never believe what Beth showed up with, "Candy! And not just any candy. The woman was pulling gingerbread-house-decorating-candy out of her purse. Seriously. She even thought she had frosting. Only my friends. Can you imagine?”Of course Wendy responded, “Oh... do you need frosting? Hold on a sec.”

She then went out to her car and popped open her trunk as I stood there, with a you have got to be freakin' kidding me look on my face and, I kid you not, the woman started pulling tubes of frosting out of her trunk. And not just frosting, but a vast assortment of Christmas themed decorative toppings...

“Really? You just happened to have this stuff in your trunk, Wendy?”

She explained that one of the activities at her office party that day had been sugar cookie decorating. They had a lot of stuff left over.

As I watched Wendy drive away, and waved good-bye to Brandon and Jaden, I stood there on my porch, admiring the twinkling lights decorating my neighbors' houses, basking in my own personal Christmas miracle moment. Thinking how lucky I am to have exactly the right friends and family for ME. Always there with exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment. I felt extremely blessed. Then I went back inside and smiled at the three adorable children who remained. Admired the lights on my tree which sat in the midst of my lovely house which looked as though it had been ransacked by angry monkeys.

I smiled at the glittering beauty of my dining room floor, which appeared to be covered with freshly fallen snow... sticky green & red snow, to be exact. I admired the hot pink frosting in my seven year-old's hair and I pried the gummy bears out of my four year old's sticky little hands. I remembered that my adorable husband would be home at any moment and that I had absolutely no clue what we were having for dinner.And I thought to myself that as incredibly lucky as I am to have the friends and family that I have, there's still an opening for a friend who carries a cleaning crew in her van... and one who delivers take-out. Plus I really wouldn't mind that vodka/prozac friend. Email me. PLEASE.