Zac's Gingerbread House

This year in school, Zac's class learned about the structure and contraction of gingerbread houses. These are pics another mom took.

Zac's is in the upper right corner, with the red and black tree (which he was pretty bummed about since all the green frosting was gone.)

I'm glad he got to do this at school, because it didn't happen around here. I even had supplies :( We always have next year.

Neighbor Gifts

Dec 19 --
I eating some rollo pretzel bites some years back, and even since have wanted to make them. This year I decided that's what we'd do for our neighbor treats. It was pretty fun, easy, fairly quick and they are yummy! I bought a TON of pretzels my estimation was WAY off. And I bought several bags of rollos (I should have bought more). The boys liked helping to unwrap the rollos. Zac put the rollos on the pretzels too. Preheat the over to 350 and bake for 3 minutes. Then add an M&M to the top and press down. Chill til set.

Max had to finish his dinner before he could help...here are his M&M incentives

All the rollo foil wrappers

Jon was the best and quickest at pushing the M&M's down

I also bought a bag of hugs to see how they would work

I had so many pretzel that I decided to buy more rollos after Christmas and make these for a New Year's Eve treat. As per Jon's suggestion, I bought some peanut butter M&M to see how much they would taste like Take 5 candy bars. Pretty good! (But of course we made sure to do plenty with out the peanut butter for the boys).

Gingerbread Men

Dec 12 --
Last year, Zac's preschool teacher gave him a book for Christmas. The book was about the gingerbread man. It even has a recipe on the back of the book (and its pretty good). So I told Zac we would make them. Since I've been so tired, I have hardly baked this season at all. It also helped that I had visiting teaching treats to deliver.

The boys ended up going to bed really late b/c it took so long. Daddy wasn't feeling well, but he came out to help the boys decorate theirs while I finished the rolling out and baking.

Max's 4th Birthday

Dec 4 --
On Sunday, Max's actual birthday we did a simple dinner of scones and fruit and he opened the presents from us. It was nice to have a low key day after the previous one.

He got this fun jenga type game.

I love how Max is all tensed up here thinking about the tower falling. Zac was really stressed about it too!

Decorating the Mini Tree

Dec 4 --

Now that Jon is in the Bishopric, we try to find things to keep us busy while we wait for him to come home from his meetings.

This is the tree that we bought for our first Christmas. I thought it would be fun for the boys to have it in their room. I remember one year, Rachel and I got to have a little, live tree in our room for Christmas and it sure was magical.

The tree was pre-lit and sparse with lots of dead lights so I added a strand of color lights from past years, that we weren't using. And the boys got to put all their own ornaments on it from previous years. They had a fun time.

Max's Construction Birthday Party

Dec 3 --
Ready for picture overload...

We've never done a friend birthday for Max. Zac has had a few, the younger years were mostly family friends, but last year he had a great one. This friend party was also a reward for Max feeding himself dinner for a month or so. Yes, we still have feeding issues with this one.

It had been July since the last party or event that I planned, Rachel's baby shower. I told myself no friend parties for a few years, but I felt bad that Max never got one and he's talked a lot about his birthday since August when it was mine and Zac's birthday.  I again surprisingly, felt motivated enough to plan a fun themed party-Construction. I went all out AND even did a themed cake-very impressive for me at this point in life pregnancy.

Here is the invitation I made. Max loved going around to houses to drop them off.

And the cake. Not as fancy as the pirate ship cake-but still a great one. I got the idea while looking on pinterest.com on this blog.  The inside of the cake didn't turn out as well...there were a few things I did for the first time when I made this cake, like use the wilton bake even strips, the cakes were slanted instead of domed...perhaps b/c the oven racks are not straight? and i baked them per high altitude directions and i added a ton of dye to the batter to get the colors.

The effect is there, but probably not noticeable to those who didn't know.

I think I've said it somewhere here on my blog, but the feel in a theme of a party or what not is all in the details. I had fun looking at pinterest and getting ideas from others who did construction parties.

Caution tape around My christmas tree. Hard hats and tool belts for each kiddo. We ended up having nine 3-4 year old boys. There were four girls invited but ironically none of them showed up. I'm surprised how smooth things went and all the boys were so well behaved.

I got this idea off another blog, have the kids paint a house like construction workers. I got mini rollers for moldings and door jams at the hardware store, washable crayola paint, and called a local appliance shop to get huge boxes. Jon and I cut doors and windows to make a play house. The boys loved painting it and it was so cute to watch too.

I also like this idea, found through pinterest. But they used streamers with balloons at the bottom. I think the caution tape worked out great!

While we were waiting for everyone to arrive, the boys made little structures with gum drops and tooth picks.

We were concerned about Zac feeling bad that he would be last to try and do everything and let the guests go have a chance first (since he's the oldest and the brother), so he was the foreman. And he did a great job and was such a good helper and had a great attitude with patience the whole time.

Painting

Gotta have balloons!

The finished job-anyone want to hire this team?

After painting we headed downstairs for the demolition site. Jon rigged up a shower rod with a small ball hanging from it for the wrecking ball.

The tower waiting for demo. The boys loved it and were pretty good at taking turns. They also liked to help re-stack the tower to crash it down again.

After demo, we headed to the garage for the piñata. (I LOVE having a bigger house!) Ever since a family friend had one in October Max has been talking about a piñata for his birthday. It was nice to get rid of the rest of the Halloween candy. I also put little toys in it for the goodie bags instead of having the goodie bags preassembled.

The little boy who was last in line was sooo anxious to get a chance to hit the piñata. Luckily we were able to support the piñata and it lasted til that last little boy hit it.

Cake eating

Max was also excited about gummy worms, so I thought it was appropriate to add them to the cake and oreo dirt crumbs.

Presents

Jon is such a good daddy. He took the play house downstairs and let the boys keep it and play in it for another couple weeks before we cut it apart for the recycling.

And I have give major props to my Honey, Jon. There is NO WAY I could have pull this off without him. He helped so much on that day and cleaned and helped put most of the house together for this party, while I made the cake. And he did great hosting the boys and ushering them from one activity to the other while I got the next thing ready, cleaned up the previous activity and took pictures. He did a great job! Thanks so much for the support Honey, I love you!!