gingerbread houses!

This season brings along one of our favorite things to do with the kids-gingerbread houses! We phoned texted a few friends, and threw together a fun FHE. Isaac and Eliza practiced incredible patience throughout the day leading up to the party, as I emptied more and more candy into bowls! :) I was so surprised that they listened and didn't eat any (until, of course...we started decorating the houses!) At that point, every single child in the room ate 5 pieces of candy for every ONE piece that ended up on their house. Let's just say I thought for sure I was going to wake up in the middle of the night to a little one with a stomach ache! Eliza thought nobody was looking... But I was. Enter creepy voice: {I SEE EVERYTHING} Our dearest, and most loyal friend, Wegmans, came through with really great gingerbread pieces that were easy to assemble (and smelled delicious!) I think this was Isaac's first year to really do his house entirely on his own. Who you can't see behind Isaac is this little guy, baby Andrew! He stayed pretty close to Isaac the entire night, because lo and behold, he was feeding baby Andrew countless candies! You can tell in the picture that he is right in the middle of chewing on a piece of candy! (or so we hope!)

This is Andrew's awesome mom, Jen, who let baby Andrew take part in Isaac's "sharing." And this is her son, James, who is Eliza's buddy. (My camera was on a high aperture, so James is blurry-argh!) And this is Danny, Isaac's buddy, and Jen's oldest son. (Three boys!) Her husband was working that night, so she was a trooper to come over on her own! This is Liam and Gavin, and this picture is priceless. Cheesy smile, and eating candy! Ha! Rachel was also quite the trooper and brought her boys over by herself while her husband recovered from working nights. Working nights is the pits! Miss Reese is pretty much picture perfect. And their gingerbread house was AWESOME! Mr. Cheesy McCheeser himself, Ethan, is such a cutie! His dad was genius and put all of the good candy on his house so that he could enjoy them later on! Ha! I love Ethan's reese peanut butter cup chimney!



 And finally, Miss Ramona made an appearance about halfway through, and was pretty much in a milk coma the entire time. :) At one point I had no clue where she went, and I found her happily kicking her feet in her bouncy chair over in the corner of the room! We can't wait to eat look at our gingerbread houses for the next few weeks!