Gingerbread Houses

I made my first real gingerbread house this week.

After spending an entire fun day with my girlfriends decorating one myself, the rest of the family really wanted to make some too.
So we bought the "pre-assembled houses" at Costco for them and spent our Saturday morning making festive gingerbread houses.

Lucy was very particular about lining up colors together.
She and McKay kept at their houses longer than anyone else.

Sadie went with bright colors all over and a cute pattern on the roof with mini candy canes.

McKay's coconut rooftop and his shiny walkway were awesome.

Zach got in on it for a while but left early to play in a concert and never came back to finish it.

Dad had the best roof.
Unfortunately the frosting wouldn't harden fast enough and it slipped
out of place a little by the time he was finished.

He also surprisingly lost interest after the roof.

Here is our finished Christmas gingerbread village.
We had such a fun time making it!

Show Time!

This time of year is always busy I know but yesterday was crazy busy!

We had three separate performances all in one evening.
Sadie and Lucy had their end of year gym/Cheer/Dance recital, Sadie had a drama performance and Zach had a guitar performance.

Sadie has spent 4 hours a day on Mondays and Wednesdays at Whitney's gym all Fall. She loves it and can't get enough of it!
Because she is so involved there she was in FOUR of the seven performances for the evening. The girl did probably 30 bank-handsprings, 3 back tucks plus aerials and front tucks in between and did this for three different performances. By the final performance she was huffing and puffing, but she was a trooper.

I loved watching my girls perform together.

Here's Sadie is in her dance performance. She is so graceful!

Sadie's All-Stars cheer squad did their routine they will be competing with this season.
Their squad ranges in age from 6 to 12 and they are really good!
The girls are most excited to compete at Nationals at Disneyland in February.


Here she is during a tumbling pass. Look at that air!


Lucy performed with her gymnastics class.
She recently learned a round off back-handspring. She was very nervous to hit it in her performance but she did so great. She had straight arms and everything!
MY favorite part about watching Lucy was her smile. She kept it the entire performance.
She absolutely LOVED being out there!

What a sweet smile!

After the girls were done I ran Sadie up to her Drama performance. Luckily they had performed for the school earlier in the day so Abe and I were able to catch that performance.
After dropping Sadie off the rest of the family drove down to Dixon Middle School to watch Zach and his friend Ben Maughan perform at The Ohana Festival. This is a celebration of diverse cultures for the Holidays for the families of Dixon.
The boys performed three of their original songs.
"Life Like a King", "New World' and "Shine On".
They were part of a program of cultural performances including a Native dance of Fiji and some Hawaiian dances.
We decided Zach and Ben were representing the White boy band culture!