Our latest construction project!

Brittin and Tate
Olivia (check out her Santa in the chimney)


Hannah and Monte did theirs together...I cant find his picture!

Taylor and Meredith worked together on this house.

I got to do my very own and didnt bother taking a picture of it!

Gingerbread Houses!

So remember I didn't let my kids carve pumpkins and promised that we could do gingerbread houses instead? Well, let me just tell you, pumpkins are cheaper, easier and a lot less messy! I found a recipe and "assumed" that each batch made one house. Three batches of gingerbread later, we were ready to make our houses. Well I was feeling very overwhelmed with trying to get everything done so while I was doing appointments one day, Joel saved me by rolling out gingerbread, cutting out the house sections and baking them. Needless to say, two batches made five gingerbread houses! We made an entire army of gingerbread men with the remaining dough! Joel, being the awesome carpenter he is, then assembled all the houses. He did such a great job! The next day we got out all the candy and supplies and spent the morning seeing just how much sugar we could put onto one house! We had Heathers three youngest kids over and Tate decorated his own house, Monte helped the girls with theirs and Chloe entertained us all. As messy and exhausting as it was, we had so much fun. The girls definitely want to make it a family tradition. I will confess that when the Christmas stuff went 75% off after Christmas, I went and bought pre-made gingerbread houses for $2.50 each. I anticipate that next year it will save a lot of stress and make it a lot more fun for all of us! If you are wondering what we did with our houses after the holidays well....we fed them to our horses! They went crazy over them! It must have been all the molasses!