Mentor Gingerbread Contest

 Wow, this day was fun, but also stressful.  Our task as mentors with our mentees was to build the best Gingerbread house with our given 1 hour timeframe.  This is the 2nd annual Mentor Gingerbread Contest, so there were some old pros, but also some new faces to the crowd.  My mentee is Cohen Dean this year, and my first time actually participating as a mentor, as this year, the program is being coordinated by Jonathan Bailey.  Magan is mentoring Linley Rawls.  Davis is being mentored by Jeff Hornsby, and Sam by Rick May.  

My day started well, in that the gingerbread houses magan bought and handed out gave me that was pre-built, just needed to be decorated. Oh, so much easier.  I am not good with this type of craft, and even decorating, me and Cohen were so messy with the icing.  I don't know what I did wrong, but the icing did not come out like we wanted it to.  You can see in the pics below, I even tried it with gloves to keep my hands clean, but that did not work either.  I brought some Monster Toys, so Cohen help decorate ours into a Monster House.  

Now Magan and Linley I think were almost in tears at one point.  Their's was not pre-built and it was not coming together very well at all.  It started as some small buildings, then I think they completely started over at one point, and the roof was slowly falling apart.  And by the awards ceremony had completely fallen apart.  Magan got very loud as she was working on the house, and it was funny to others that saw her emotion as being funny, but to those of us like me and Davis right next to her...we knew she was almost at a tipping point with frustration.  So we had to calm her down.  She won't ever read this, but if she does, Davis will clearly back me up, that she was borderline going crazy with that house.  We will need to give her a pre-built one next year.  

As for Davis and Jeff...they are two peas in a pod.  Those guys are already fast fishing buddies.  They put together an outdoorsy house with a tree (Jeff ran outside to gather some branches) that went thru the house during a tornado.  I think they also "borrowed" one of our monsters and had it in a pool of blood on the front lawn.  Tragic I know, but it was well presented.  

And did I mention peas in a pod...that is also Sam and Rick.  Rick is an automation and control engineer for a local limestone plant.  I shouldn't say "an", rick is "the" engineer at that plant.   And has taken Sam there and shown him all the controls involved.  Now they both told everyone in a very serious tone "They told us to build a house, so we built a house".  And they did.  It was textbook decorated, with perfectly aligned cinnamon toast crunch as shingles.  And of course, Sam let little Ruby help him and Rick with their house, as she was slowly walking around hoping to participate.  

So there was some booing at the decision that no winner would be selected, as these kids did not want a participation trophy, they wanted to WIN.  But Jonathan handed out some funny prizes to all.  Another fun time for these kids and their mentors.