"Oh, How Awful!"

It's a tradition in Gary's family to decorate gingerbread houses each year. His mother bakes and assembles 15 to 20 houses and hands them out to family, friends and various children to decorate. My mother-in-law amazes me with the amount of food and goodies her kitchen produces, there is always enough to feed a small army. This year was no different and Gary and I spent an evening making a hugenormous* mess with candy, pretzels and frosting. Since I'm my mother's daughter, I spent time agonizing over the perfection and traditional design of my house. My dear husband on the other hand, while very detail-oriented, is anything but traditional. Needless to say, the gingerbread house Gary created received this kind of reaction from his sister Shyla.

GARY (showing the back of his house): Do you like my gingerbread house Shyla?

SHYLA: Oh how cute!

GARY (flipping the house around): What about the front?

SHYLA (with horror): Oh, how awful!

Since Shyla liked it so much, I thought I would share Gary's "awful" creation, one of his sources of inspiration and I'll even throw my house into the mix for extra holiday cheer. Enjoy!

I adore Calvin & Hobbes and hope you enjoy these wintery strips. Notice the similarities of these comics and Gary's house. You might as well paste Gary's face over Calvin's.

Merry Christmas!

Gary would like to thank his wife and mother, but most of all Mr. Jim Oden for their ideas and support of his 2008 gingerbread house.

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P.S. My husband really is a mentally stable individual, he's just been playing too many video games and working at the hospital for too long.

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*an original Gary word, or a hybrid of huge & enormous.