Thursday, October 23, 2008

HNT - The Rise And Fall Of The House Of Zander

The other day, Francine picked up a Halloween gingerbread house that Alexander had been wanting us to buy for several weeks now. And on Monday evening when I got home from work, Alexander had been waiting patiently for us to get started on building it.

So, just before supper, we laid out the "foundation" for the house, putting the walls in place and ensuring the icing/glue was dry before proceeding with the rest of the construction.

And, by the time bath time rolled around, the house was completed.


Not a bad job if I do say so myself.


Unfortunately, the house slowing began to crumble while Alexander was upstairs having his bath. Francine called out to me to come down and try to help her put it back together when the roof pieces started sliding (likely from the weight of the black icing covering the roof) - we managed to get it together twice, but then the pumpkins and other candies on the peak collapsed inside, and the house continued to break down.

It reminded me of The Fall of the House of Usher.


I knew Alexander would be absolutely devastated.

So what I did was mention to Alexander that it's not much fun to just look at such a yummy sounding house -- I asked him if he wanted to try eating it (of course, while building the house, Francine had to work hard to keep both Alexander and I from munching on the candy and gingerbread). He was delighted with the prospect, so when we came downstairs, the house was standing with the roof pieces off, and I invited Alexander to take a huge bite from the gingerbread wall.


We each took our turns taking bites and then the fall of the house of Zander wasn't a tragedy but instead a celebration.

Whew. Crisis averted. :)

3 comments:

Dana said...

Now that was some amazing, on-the-spot parental thinking there! Glad you got photos of it before the eventual demise!

BTExpress said...

I was going say you had architect in the making, but never mind.

lime said...

love the picture of him biting the house. glad to hear it was fun both in building and in eating when it feel apart. i was going to say a falling down house seems appropriate for a halloween decoration but eating it was a much yummier solution.