Originally posted on December 25, 2014, by cruisingrunner
Our Christmas Eve tradition at home was always making homemade personal pizzas. We skipped it last year when we were in La Cruz, because there was a big cruisers’ dock party on Christmas Eve, and we chose to be social instead. This year, however, we reverted back to our tried and true tradition, and although it wasn’t quite the same since the boys are older and Andrew isn’t with us, it was still quite a bit of fun. It was fun mostly due to Brenden. He shaped his pizza dough into all kinds of creations including a sailboat, pac man eating pac dots, and even Santa Clause himself. When he got ready to add the sauce and toppings to his dough, he had it in the shape of a star, and he asked me if he could leave it like that. I started in with all the reasons why he could not, the primary one being that it was too thick and would therefore cook at a different rate than the others. His brother, 13-year-old Alex, came to his rescue and reminded me to stop subconsciously squashing Brenden’s playfulness. Alex suggested that Brenden could just cook his pizza separately, and then he looked at Brenden and deadpan told him, “Don’t let mom shape your dough.” I almost died. He was being funny, but how seriously spot on was he?So, in the spirit of the Christmas season, please learn from my experience, and let *your* kids be the shapers of their own dough.-D.
Gresham Family Exodus 