Gingerbread House

 This year the girls decided they wanted to make a REAL gingerbread house. We tried it once before and it wasn't great. I figured it would be an epic fail, but I was willing to give it a shot. 

I reached out to my BFF Danielle as she is an expert gingerbread house maker- her architecture background helps her immensely. She game me some good tips, and got to work.

We looked up some templates. Claire kept saying, "We want to build a mansion!" The more we looked, the closer I got to hyperventilating. I finally told them we needed to keep it simple, and if it worked out we would do a harder one next year.

I'm happy to say it was a huge success, and the kids had a lot of fun! It was really sweet to watch, and definitely worth taking the time to do it.

I think using hot glue to hold the house together is the best possible tip and absolutely essential!

Hammond's Candy and Downtown

 Should you ever hear my children say "we don't do anything"- you have my full permission to thwack them.

Today's adventures: Hammond's Candy Factory Tour, then downtown to see the German Christmas Market and then the parade floats, our annual test tasting of the three Christmas Shake Shack flavors, and game night.

Family time is the best time.

My Favorite People

 

Jerusalem Dinner

 Every year, we do a Jerusalem dinner. We eat fish and figs and hummus, eat on the floor, and light candles to try and remember our Savior during this busy time of year.

Tonight was our Jerusalem dinner. As I lit the candles I said, "Can you imagine how hard it would be to only have candles at night? For most of history they could only use candles. You girls have no idea!" And Audra said, "Do YOU have an idea, mom?"

So now I have to buy coal and return some presents.

Love These Girls!

 Almost once a week I come home from an errand or something and I find this:

These girls really are the BEST! When I started homeschooling, my goal was to have a literature household. I think we have accomplished that times 10!

Proud Mom!

 I am so proud of this girl:

Adjusting to high school has been rough. Far more rough than we could have anticipated. She has worked harder than ever before in her life. She has had solid A's in 5 of her classes, and then really, really struggled with honors Biology. The tests didn't match the homework, so even though she got 100% on all her homework, she bombed all her test. We worried she could end up with a D in the class. We hired her a private tutor, she went to meet with her teacher at least once a week, she did extra homework to practice- she did everything she could. She studied for hours and hours and hours for the final. And, she got an 88% and therefore a B in the class! This B came with so many tears, feelings of self doubt, and loss of sleep- this was the hardest earned B! I'm so proud of her for doing really hard things. She really is something else, and I couldn't be prouder of her for being thrown into this new environment and thriving so well.

(Note: here she is eating gingerbread waffles. We tried this new recipe and it was a big hit)

Christmas Baking

The factory work has begun.

This year I dared to try homemade marshmallows and Caramel (Caramel is a High family tradition that I swore I wouldn't continue because they are such a pain to wrap! I forgot that I have kids now- they can do the wrapping!). Both of these recipes scared me at high altitude.

Even though I read the recipe wrong for the first batch of marshmallows and had to make a second, both batches surprisingly turned out excellent. I think we will for sure be making both in the future- we got lots of compliments on them.