Gingerbread traditions

For the last few years my wonderful neighbor (who was kind of like a close friend, sister, grandma to my kids kind of neighbor) would come with her granddaughter Maya and we would make gingerbread houses. Due to the high humidity levels, they would often collapse, but we had good times putting them together. Every year we were determined to make them a little better than the previous year. Our graham crackers got promoted to real gingerbread and the week before I would excited cell phone calls about what perfect candy she'd found.

Then we moved, and I missed her alot this year when we got out the molasses and cloves and started building our little village. She gave us some little ceramic cottages and houses that we had fun adding to our gingerbread city.

I would love to know how many times they were licked before Christmas was over.