Candy Houses

Rather than do one loooong post of this past month's activities, you'll probably see a string of Christmas related posts in the next few days.

Growing up we had a tradition of making graham cracker houses on a Monday night close to Christmas for our Family Home Evening. We would usually watch The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, have more candy than we would see the rest of the year at our disposal, and my parents would help us build our houses while we could decorate any way we wanted. I didn't ever feel very creative, but it was always a lot of fun and something I looked forward to every year.

The boys had a lot of fun. Matt built their houses and the boys decorated (Matt helped Walt with his a little). I built and decorated my own. Dean was a minimalist when it came to decorating. After about 4 starlight candies he said he was finished. I kept promising him he could use more candy! He ended up putting a little more on after my promptings.  Walter ate probably 3 times as much as Dean and put about that much more on his house as well.  He has a sugar tooth for sure! We listened to the Muppet's Christmas Album with John Denver since that was a Christmas fav. for Matt's family. Dean did tell me he didn't like it though. haha. Silly boy.

I think my favorite thing from the whole night was when Matt was asking the boys their favorite feature of their houses, Dean said it was his guns on the roof. Matt asked what the guns did and he said, "They shoot candy at the bad guys and they eat it until their stomachs explode." HAHAHA! Where in the world did he come up with that?? And you know, in America, that might just work as a good form of home security.

Growing up we'd keep our houses on the mantle until the New Year and then we'd eat the candy off of them. It grosses me out just to think about how dusty, stale and old it must have been! But we loved it. I let the boys eat theirs the day after Christmas, and they just ate mine today. I failed to get a picture of mine. Oops.

Their faces in these next four just cracked me up, so I added all of them in even though they're similar. We tried to get a "normal" picture of both of them, but I think we failed on all accounts...unless this is normal. Yeah. I think that's it.