Gingerbread Houses at Grove Park

The Christmas Chain has been ripped open every morning with eager anticipation.

The words on the little paper strips have led us to watching a few more Christmas classics – like Pee Wee’s Christmas Special.

(Yeah, I don’t believe that’s considered a classic at any home but ours.  It’s an insane little piece of 80’s/90’s television.  Please, please, confide to me that someone else has watched this show so I won’t feel as if our family is odd alone.)

We’ve baked banana bread and drawn Christmas cards for our neighbors.

We’ve visited our local children’s museum and created gingerbread houses.

But there have also been some paper requests that have been – er- flops, I guess.

One day we made cookies – like the chain said – but instead of packaging them and sending them to Nate – we had unexpected company and we all ate the cookies instead.

And we also made another loaf of banana bread for our friend Walter but I left it in the suburban for so long that I finally let the  kids eat it for a snack the other day when we were sitting in Christmas shopping traffic.

But one trip we did make, in obedience to the chain, was when Kevin was out of town recently for work.

We loaded up a few snacks and headed to Asheville’s Grove Park Inn to see their annual Gingerbread House Competition.

We’d been hearing about this competition and display for a couple of years but had never managed to include a trip up there into our holiday plans.

The buildings and the grounds at Grove Park Inn were ridiculous – in a good way.

(I want to visit again as a guest, sans children. Kevin – are you reading this? That would be such a lovely getaway.)

The kids had a blast, careening back and forth from exhibit to exhibit, awed that every extraordinary creation was actually edible.

We saw everything you could imagine – in gingerbread.

Even a gingerbread baby Jesus.  (Which Maggie said was probably alright since Jesus was the bread of life and all and ginger is, well, it has “bread” in the title.  So.)

And this one based on the movie Up.  (Which made Mosely declare, “I want this for my birthday cake!”  Keep hoping, Mo-Town.  Keep hoping.)

The winner of the contest created a gingerbread version of nesting dolls.

(The dolls were incredible, but frankly, the kids and I debated heavily whether they looked gingerbread-y enough to us to win a gingerbread contest.  We decided they did not.  But, as we were not the judges, it didn’t actually matter what we thought.)

The trip was so fun and the gingerbread houses so creative, we definitely plan to add this excursion to a list of annual traditions for our family.