The Gingerbread Train Tradition

Part of our Christmas tradition is the making of the gingerbread with the cousins. We use a "no fail" recipe that produces the best I've tasted. The decorations vary from year to year -- and the design elements are always a surprize, but the tradition of the gingerbread train goes on. It's referred to as "The Gingerbread Train" because we stop in Waterloo first and do a batch and then on to Sarnia.


This year Christine added the crown and reindeer to my cutter collection.

And this year, in honour of what we think is our 15th anniversary --

I fashioned the gingerbread train from assorted cutters.
Julia's fashionista gingerbread gal.

Christine was distracted from the cookie making by our free version of the video game Peggle.

Shaun's nordic-style reindeer.

Owen's nuclear waste forest of trees.

Jack's snack attack - this buddy reminded me of King Julian of the lemmers in Madagascar.

Maggie's pretty star.

Shaun taking a break with some icing packs.

Decorating is stressful work.

This was a milestone moment for me - both in Waterloo and in Sarnia, the girls -- Julia, Maggie and Sara-- took over the mixing and kneading of the dough. Usually that was my job -- but now that we have big girls, it was wonderful to pass the tradition on to them.

There were no shortage of treats left for Santa. And this is the first year that we even had a fight over gingerbread, when someone ate someone else's special Christmas tree. I guess they were more invested in the tradition than I thought.