One of my fond memories from childhood is decorating and EATING gingerbread men. If memories serves me, our cast of characters always resembled a cheerier side of the holidays. 
This year, for the first time, I decided to share this joyful experience with me son. We looked up a recipe and went to the store to purchase all of the necessary items to create yummy masterpieces to give to teachers, and good neighbors. Sadly, the opportunity for a mother-son bonding to mix up the ingredients was just not happening. YaYa’s studies were just not lightening up. The eve of the last day of school before the break, I finally decided to mix it all up on my own while YaYa finished off his studies.
This was when I discovered that the cookie dough needs to chill for quite some time before you can roll and cut the cookies. *sigh* No cookies for the teachers this year.
The following night, YaYa and I donned our aprons to roll and cut out the men. We baked up the hearty crew and watched as they seemed to rise to the occasion. The bulk of them actually rose so much that I jokingly commented that they need a good personal trainer. Ah, but they taste so good – even without the candy decorations.
We let them cool a bit and then began our task of prettying them up. Unfortunately, the results were not pretty. After we each did a couple, I blamed the frosting for the failure to bring out their cheery side. We abandoned the task until I could get another kind of frosting.
The next day, we tried again. The outcome was no better but we stuck with it, hearts set in delivering a few good men to three fantastic neighbors. We sure did laugh a lot during the process.
Later in the evening, we humbly delivered our best attempt at spreading holiday cheer with a most apologetic message. “They taste much better than they look. I promise. Merry Christmas!” I know these guys look pretty sad, but honestly…
