Christmas

Around the 20th of December one of the kids poked their head into our bedroom late one night asking when we were going to build gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. I had totally forgotten that I had agreed to do that this year. Oops.

We decided to spend a couple days prepping (as in, cleaning the house and finishing Christmas presents), then do the graham cracker thing on Christmas Eve. 

It turned out pretty fun.

Thankfully W slept through most of the building, so I had time to help.

B got SO excited. He loved the whole process, especially eating the candy.

Poor M got sick and was throwing up off and on throughout Christmas Eve. This was as far as her little house got before she left to go take a nap.

J2 decided to build a treehouse. Several of the others ended up following. Or maybe they gave him the idea before anyone started... not sure which.

J1 built some huge structure with a huge flat roof which kept collapsing. He fixed it though and then covered the whole thing in "snow" and more cinnamon bears.

C had the brilliant idea to make a tire swing out of chocolate covered pretzels and twizzler pull'n'peel. Several others copied that idea.

D built a trailer (like an RV trailer) and a treehouse. Apparently we've been watching a lot of Treehouse Masters and Tiny House Nation. :)

K is getting pretty good at these things. She had a lot of patience with this twizzler ladder for her treehouse. 

Dave (as always) created a very precise, very thought-out creation (he once made a huge transformer). It took the kids WAY TOO LONG to figure out what he was making (though my sister, Stacey, figured it out based on a texted photo of the whole group). :)

I guess he sees a lot of the Salt Lake Temple on his way to and from work. ;)

It's so much fun to see everyone working together. Especially since I only had 5 pastry bags so they had to take turns.

The completed village is a lot of fun. :)

And Christmas Day!! I did not take nearly enough pictures this day. But I did take a bunch of videos... which I'm not going to upload here because they are HUGE. :)

Notice how the ornaments have migrated to the top half of the tree...

My new color laser printer!

K on her way to test-ride her new bike (after she helped assemble it) in the snow (and ice) along with her new helmet, new gloves, her AG doll (from two years ago), and her pajamas. She wanted to wear her new winter hat, but it wouldn't fit under or over the helmet.