Gingerbread houses!

"I can do it! I can do it! I can do it myself!"

The kids had so much homework, and hardly any time off before Christmas, so we had to cram in our favorite holiday traditions starting on December 22nd. First was gingerbread houses!
Of course, they're actually graham cracker houses, and we totally cheat now by using the glue gun to construct our houses. But that just gets us to the fun part, the cementing on of candy!

Luke is so independent, much more so than his brothers at this age. He had to do it all himself!
 

Licking off the frosting (which hardly even tastes good; it's Royal Frosting, a.k.a. edible glue. Blech!)

 

Jared's skyscraper maximizes yard space.

Zach using the glue gun.

Luke with his finished house! And only a little help from Mom!

Luke commissioned a sleigh, then said it needed a reindeer.

Random candy placement at its finest.

Licorice smile!

Zach's house.

You know, I'm getting a little miffed at Picasa and Blogger right now, because I just went through all these photos, putting captions on them, and I don't really want to do it again. So I'll have to figure out how to get you to my online photo album so you can just look through the pictures and read the captions directly! In the meantime, make up your own explanations for the rest of these photos. :)