Graham Cracker Construction Company

This year I seemed to not be quite as "with it" as I would have liked for the Christmas holidays. I think that we were passing around colds and whatnot so many things we would normally do during the season were missed. We didn't do letters to Santa or even visit him for that matter. This makes me somewhat sad and I am really going to make an extra effort to make sure that I plan better to not have this happen again (to the extent that planning could have helped.....sickness just happens lol).
But we DID do our annual graham cracker houses! We got together with my mom, Michael, and the missionaries and built our masterpieces! I was very happy that this was not missed. It was really fun this year because the kids had the attention spans to actually stay with a parent and complete building one. They also were more able to say what they wanted and didn't want on their houses so they were a little more "theirs" instead of mine or Christopher's.
Christopher paired up with Dallin to build their house.Dallin especially was pretty good at squeezing the frosting, building walls and deciding where he wanted things put. He was able to do a lot of things independently after he was shown how once or twice. I think he used a whole tube of icing on the 1st story roof of his house....I am not sure why....but I suppose it is his creative perspective. It was really fun to see him working with his dad to build this. He really enjoys his time with Christopher. Here he is with his finished product. I love how proud he looks! He is really growing up. He tells me all the time "I am a big boy now. I can do LOTS of things!"
Kate and I opted to go with the castle theme for the graham cracker house this year (not a big surprise considering her princess infatuation). It turned out pretty good...even if it did completely collapse halfway through....and the towers were too big and heavy. LOL Kate didn't seem to notice and that is what was important. She liked helping me squeeze the frosting. Our biggest accomplishment this year was that we came up with the "castle" theme (which the boys borrowed :) AND we even came up with the drawbridge. I thought it was really quite clever....the boys also "borrowed" this. Kate's favorite part of doing the houses was decorating. She took to it right away and was surprisingly dexterious when it came to placing M&Ms along the seams that she chose. She was focusing so hard that she was pulling a "Michael Jordan" and totally had her tongue sticking out in concentration. I was really surprised when she picked up on that and started doing it ALL ON HER OWN! What a smartie! I really enjoyed working with her. Here she is with the finished product. You can't see it really well in the picture, but we also had chocolate bears jumping rope and marshmallow trees!
Some sampling was done and houses rose and fell, but a good time was had by all! I really love traditions!