Gingerbread creations

This past weekend Laura, Teresa, Tonia, Ruth and Jan all got together at Jan's and made gingerbread creations. The dough and cutting out was done on Thursday and Friday and the real work began Saturday. Chris and Jonathan happily escaped to the beach.

Wilson hovered close hoping for treats to drop. Tonia tossed him the most goodies.

Laura makes plans and tries out different tracks

Laura's train has a licorice track, cookie wheels, pretzel "chuggers", licorice coal in the cab and a lantern. A cute snowman keeps watch amid the rocks and snow.

The caboose has a pond, tree and lamp post

Laura's finished train holds lots of candy.

Grandma was the first one done and was very creative with a wreath of leaves.

Grandma's wreath has different colored leaves, clove filled gumdrops, a pretty bird, holly berries and green sugared leaves and cinnamon sticks. She plans to put a bowl in the center where the bow is currently shown. By removing the orange leaves after Thanksgiving she can make it more Christmas-like.

A horse drawn sleigh took visitors out to the lot to pick out their tree.

Laura is seen in back of Teresa's trees

Teresa's campfire pit with lanterns in the background

Teresa's fininshed christmas tree farm

Jan made a combination market and sweet shop. Details included furnishings inside of a table with cake, brownies, cookies, carmeled apples, cinnamon rolls, a " tiny gingerbread house" a row of books, bags of flour, a basket of apples and a christmas tree. Outside were trees, a snow man, a pile of logs, a basket of fruit, pumpkins and barrels, and clock. Her roofs were made of hershey chocolate bars and necco wafers.

Tonia made an entire streetfront complete with a bookstore, toy store, bakery and cafe. She designed it all herself using excel. Details include a pond, park bench, lamp posts,a bay window, four different looks to the buildings (brick, siding, stucco and gingerbread), and three roof types (cereal, necco wafers, and shredded wheat).

We are excited about the news of David Christopher. Jonathan and Tonia gave us tee shirt from "David" to let us know the out come of the ultrasound. We are so happy to know the gender so we can start planning more specific gifts. I already bought my first boy outfit.
This weekend the family is kind of scattered. The girls have gone north to help Tonia paint the baby's room. Jonathan has traveled south to work at the Women of Faith conference. Jan was able to get a ticket and join Linda and Susie and the gang for tomorrow's sessions. I will ride down with Jonathan and keep him company. Chris is doing house stuff and maybe some fishing. He took today off but didn't find any fish.

Our Peru mission trip

The original vision Chris had was to build a church in an amazon village.
This is what the church looked like when the men arrived. (They took the fast boat and arrived a day ahead of the medical team) By the end of the trip it had the boards nailed down, a platform, sides, and slats on the window holes. It was about 80% complete, needing mostly benches and a podium.