Tragedy struck today, as the Larrison family gingerbread house was destroyed in a freak accident only moments before it was completed. As of this writing, the family of four remains gingerbread homeless.
The saga begins on Saturday, when Elizabeth Rose gets a bee in her bonnet to build a gingerbread house. The little girl and her daddy investigate on the internet, and the pictures produced by the search engine do nothing but fan the flames of the preschooler's imagination, meanwhile scaring her daddy with the daunting nature of the task.
After a trip to the store for ground ginger and cloves (?) and Brer Rabbit-brand molasses, the father/daughter pair spend a long time and create a huge mess mixing up the gingerbread dough. They place it in the fridge overnight.
Seven a.m. Sunday morning: "Daddy, Daddy, wake up, Daddy!" This is normal. What isn't normal is that Elizabeth does not say, "Let's watch movies." Instead, she cries, "Let's decorate the gingerbread house!"
The dough is step one. Step two is rolling it flat (1/8" thick), and cutting it into shapes according to the cardboard forms you cut the night before. Those gingerbread parts go in the oven. When they've baked and adequately cooled, it's time to mix the "glue" (three egg whites, half a teaspoon of cream of tartar [whatever that is] and, most importantly,
one pound of powdered sugar).
Now comes the heartache. Elizabeth and her daddy decorate the various walls of the house by drizzling sugarglue on them and affixing gummi bears, peppermints, candy canes, and the like. But while Daddy is holding the house together while the glue dries, a situation arises involving a crying baby, a crying big girl, and a cut lip. It is a situation that calls for two parents.
There is but one choice. Daddy abandons the gingerbread house knowing full well the consequences: a slow slide into collapse and ruination.
The picture tells the rest of the tale, except for this: it is still delicious.
