The Tale of the Gingerbread House

Once upon a time there was a mother who thought that it would be a wonderful Christmas memory for her children to make a gingerbread house.  After looking online and at cookbooks and envisioning the hours that it would take to make, she changed her mind and decided that it would be a wonderful experience to put together a gingerbread house kit. She headed to the store with all three children, bought the kit and exhausted brought it home where she promptly put it on top of the fridge and went to bed.  Several weeks later, after a long day at work she decided that it would be fun to put the gingerbread house together.   The mother didn't count on the bag of icing that was already split open in the box, a child who insisted on eating the candy that they were decorating with, one who managed to wear half of the icing and one who was trying to pretend that she was "so much more mature" than her sisters.   After a few tears, a couple of mentions of spankings if they didn't "knock it off" and a huge mess, one beautiful gingerbread house emerged.  The mother cleaned the kitchen, took some pictures, made the wayward children go to bed and then collapsed on the couch thinking that maybe next time coloring a gingerbread house would work just as well.