Gingerbread houses, Hot Chocolate, and Snow!

For family home evening this week we made gingerbread houses-Anderson style. When you go to the store, you always see these nice cute gingerbread houses with frosting and cute little candies decorating it. Well, Jac's family always made them when he was little and the rule was they could only eat the candy that was on their gingerbread house. Needless to say, it didn't take long for all of them to plaster their entire gingerbread house walls and roof with candy. Oh yeah, and they had to stuff the inside full of candy. I think that method is just ingrained into Jacob's head because he automatically loads his up without thinking. Never mind the fact that he doesn't even eat it all anyway, it's just a habit he says. Of course, we have to follow the leader of our home, and this is what they look like:Ok, apparently I forgot to take a picture of his masterpiece, but let me tell you, it was really neat. Makayla had tons of fun designing and creating her work of art. It took a lot of coaxing to get Kelli to put the candy on her crackers, rather than in her mouth. Laney didn't make one, because well, huh, candy, frosting, crackers, baby? We knew it would all just go in her mouth. She still sat in her chair and played by us and was still given plenty of sugar to keep her happy. I guess our houses don't really look like houses. Maybe we should just call them sugar boxes.

My girls LOVE drinking hot chocolate. Here is a picture of Kelli enjoying hers:

She normally drinks out of a regular cup and doesn't have problems with getting the drink all over her face. Must just be something about hot chocolate because Makayla has the same messy problem...

We have gotten so much snow the past few days. Today especially it snowed so much so fast. Jacob shoveled our driveway and sidewalks as well as the old lady across the streets' stuff two times. He figured it was getting so deep if he didn't start shoveling it would be too heavy to move. Later in the day when it stopped snowing, Makayla and Kelli had some friends over and played in it. They both loved it, but said it was cold. I tried to explain that even if you dress in warm layers and snowclothes, you can get cold, especially if you bury your head in the snow, take off your gloves, and just keep rolling around and crawling in it. That's part of the fun! Poor Kelli had a hard time walking in the snow because it came up to her waist. She finally figured out it was easier walking in Makayla's footprints. Of course, when they came inside, they had to have hot chocolate to warm up....