Christmas Day cont...

Here the kids are decorating (eating) the graham cracker houses

Corey with his house. If you compare it to all the others you will see that his house is much, much bigger than the standard floorplan that everyone else had. We think that he added on, without permits and is trying to evade rising property taxes...

Levi with his creation

Hannah with her model home

Matthew was so proud of his house

Liz put a lot of effort into hers

I'm surprised that Josh had any candy left to decorate with...

Slim Tim

Joseph didn't want to participate but we talked him into it

Michael with the before shot. The after picture would have shown a massive icing blizzard with a large snowbank on top of the roof that caved it in...

Carson with his cute cottage.


In Christmas past things have been very different. There were tons of gifts, purchased and received. I know that we have a big family so there is bound to be a lot of presents but it had gotten to the point of being overboard. Each of the kids would get 12-15 presents each from us, not to mention all the gifts from extended family and there was a flurry of packages being sent back and forth from out of state. I would spend weeks planning and purchasing and then an entire day wrapping. By the end I would be exhausted, numb and cursing Christmas. Totally NOT what the season is supposed to be about. I just knew that there had to be a better way.

So, this year we emailed all our extended family and asked for them not to purchase anything for us. We asked for cards/letters/pictures as that is what they would be receiving from us. We also told the kids that they would only be getting a few presents from us and only one from my parents. The truth of the matter is-my kids don't need anything and there is very little that they even want. It was crazy before, buying stuff for others just because that is what we did.

So, instead of presents, we had the kids decorate graham cracker houses. Corey made them the night before, using royal icing so they would stand up against toddler hands. I made each person a tube of homemade frosting and my mom supplied a bowl full of candy for each child. I can't tell you what a difference it made for me this year and the kids didn't miss having all those packages to open.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas too!