Gingerbread House Competition 2017

We went over to Tessie and Katherine's house last night for the annual Gingerbread House Competition.  There were some new faces this year and the competition was fierce as always.  Harper made her first gingerbread house and was the official candy sampler.  We did not win this year, but are already planning for our comeback next year!

    

Happy ginger-breading!

      

     

     

     

      

Harper picked all the candy for our house.  About half of the pieces made it onto the house and the other half into her belly.

       

    

    

    

An unstable Rudolph 

    

Lisa made a Uhaul truck with all her belongings in the back!

    

    

Tessa made the tower from Tangled. 

    

Alex made a prideful L'arc de Triomphe. 

    

Harper's first gingerbread house!

    

Go Panthers, go!

    

The Shire

    

Happy birthday Tessa!!!

     

    

     

Katherine built Tessa a birthday cake from gingerbread.

     

Bay and Debbie's cabin

       

Christmas lights, an Alexa device, and a drill were all involved in the making of this house!

Charlotte Christmas Village

We went to the Charlotte Christkindlmarkt with Sean and Kate last night.  It was chilly, but we had nice time!

   

Harper loves Christmas lights.

      

    

 Warm apple cider!

      

 We ate fresh mini donuts, pretzels, bratwurst and Gluhwein.

    

     

Preschool Photos

Harper had preschool photo day several weeks ago.  It was, of course, two days after she fell at school and chipped half of her front tooth.  Picture day also occurred on a morning where I was still at the hospital from the night before and wasn't home to pick an outfit or brush girlie's hair.  Luckily, Alex picked a beautiful shirt and Harper's wild hair was perfect.  When the pictures arrived in an email, I almost didn't even look at them.  I thought back to my own school pictures, all terrible and very staged.  It turns out, Harper's preschool hired a professional photographer to do their pictures.  They were amazing!!  I could not have been more surprised.  And how a stranger was able to make Harper smile is still a mystery.  We ended up with ten beautiful photos of our toddler, chipped tooth and all!

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

Holiday Spirit

Harper and I were very busy on this post-call day of mine.  We mailed our holiday cards, shipped packages, put lights on the bushes out front, and made gingerbread cookies.  We are getting into the holiday spirit!

   

My super kitchen helper, Harper!

     

     

    

She did not like the waiting part.

      

     

    

They were not the prettiest cookies, but they sure were yummy!

Thankful

Alex and I have so many things to be thankful for this year.  We celebrated Thanksgiving in Raleigh with my mom's family.  It was so lovely to see everybody.  Harper discovered a new love of vroom vroom race cars and we ate until we could not eat anymore!  Happy Thanksgiving!

   

Bob carving the turkey!

    

    

It's hard to get a picture of this one these days... always on the go!

    

    

   

   

 We had a nice holiday dinner at Grandma's house while we were in town.  Harper liked Grandma's Christmas decorations a little too much.

  

Eating with Dad's old spoon! 

    

 Alex loved the old hand mixer!