Christmas Time

So this year we started getting in the Christmas spirit before Thanksgiving. We went to the Galaxy of Lights walking night with the kids and my family. This is something Tripp and I have done every year since we were dating except last year when I was mega preggo with Porter. It was fun taking the kids and getting Porter's and maybe Padyn's too first picture with Santa. Now Padyn did not like Santa, but Porter was pretty cool with the big guy. Pictures are hard to take at Galaxy b/c of the huge contrast, but it definitely was a fun night with our Christmas tradition.










Then last Friday night we took the kids to Santa's Village at Constitution Village. This was okay at best. It was too old for our kids, maybe in a few years when they are more excited to see Santa it will be better, and when they want to see all the fun things they have there.... ie Santa's workshop, Mrs, Claus kitchen and storytime, the live music, the "mascot" people (gingerbread man, Frosty, etc).

I can say that we thoroughly tried to get the kids some experiences, and look forward to when they get older and we can take them more places.

Our Latest attempt at some Christmas spirit was the construction of a Gingerbread house. Now I thought I was set... Downloaded a template and make my gingerbread and cut the pieces, baked them perfectly and cooled them. Now I did make enough for 2 house and one of Padyn's friends, Allie, and her mom came to decorate with us. We had all the candy trimmings necessary to make a great Gingerbread house. So Allie and Lauren came over I a began to make the royal icing. Here is where I started going wrong. I am pretty sure I didn't mix it long enough, or I should have let it sit for a little while. The house would barely stay together and there is currently a glass in the center of mine that was strategically placed to hold the walls up until the icing dried. We did make an AWESOME jellybean walkway and patio on the back... since it didn't need to stand up to stick. The house ended up being a solid 3 out of 10 and only that high b/c the roof did stay on.... Something that I will def learn from and we will try again next year.