That Damn Gingerbread House

OMG! (loud and breathless, like a teenage girl) I had the all-time worst experience making a gingerbread house with my grandson.

I received a text from daughter, M, saying little N wanted to build a gingerbread house. M, a wise and subtle mother, replied "That sounds like a Grandma thing." She texted me with the good news. Taking a deep breath, I ordered a kit. I hoped it would arrive broken beyond repair. But no, apparently I was one of the lucky few who received a kit with all pieces intact. I took that as an omen.

I picked N up from school yesterday. We began to build the cursed thing. Grandpa helped. That meant Grandpa and I (both ex-managers) embarked on an epic power struggle to get the damn thing to hold together. Initially this involved frosting, but later degenerated into heat guns, glue, and holding that sucker together for an interminably long time. Nails were considered. All while N jumped in his seat talking non-stop.

We used up the kit-provided frosting trying (and failing) to get the damn house to stick together. I made more. N (aka, my shadow) insisted we divide it up into four small bowls so he could use all 4 types of food coloring. He already had the food coloring out of the pantry. Then we returned to the construction zone where T had given up on the blasted house. It was my turn. I used Elmer's glue (and plenty of it) to stick that sucker back together.

As I held it together hoping for the glue to dry, N dumped about half the candy decorations in two of the frostings. He is lightening fast. I guess in his 5 year-old mind he imagined he could frost the roof with the candy infused glop and the candy would stick out. A genius, thinking outside the box! But he had not considered they would just be buried in the frosting. I was holding it all together and couldn't stop him, although I yelled really, really loud. We really have to get that kid's hearing checked. Not sure WHY he didn't hear me.

Finally the roof stayed on! He decorated. Alas, as we stood to look at his handiwork, one side of the roof slipped off in slow motion. He lost interest and went inside. There was no way I could stop. I re-glued the hateful roof and propped up each side with boxes to keep them in place. Two hours later N's father, MV, came to get him. I  took the boxes away from the sides of the roof. It held! N was delighted. I'm pretty sure he thought I was a miracle worker. I was happy, although my blood pressure was rather high.

After they left I took the following pictures:

Not the best gingerbread house you've ever seen, but dammit! it was a house. At last I could relax.  Unfortunately, gravity rules supreme. Here's how it looked this morning:

I surrender.