PopTart Christmas Gingerbread Houses

 We watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional last night (Sunday).  It was really good.  Elder Jeffrey R. Holland shared a poem that he wrote and it was beautiful.  I'm hoping to get a copy of it soon.  President Nelson also spoke (we are so blessed to have a living prophet who is always so willing and able to speak to us).  I had to take a picture of President Oaks.  He was conducting at one point during the program and he accidentally left his mask hanging on his ear.  We got a really good laugh out of it!

Today was a good Monday.  The kids got right back into the swing of things and only Bryce shed a few tears.  As a reward, we made gingerbread houses out of PopTarts.  I just discovered this idea through the internet and it was the best thing ever.  I will never go back to using graham crackers to make gingerbread houses.  These were sturdy and they looked beautiful.  I assembled the houses a few hours before they decorated them so that they would be stronger and not fall apart.  They held up wonderfully!  We used a bunch of colorful left over Halloween candy and some Christmas M&M's and sprinkles to decorate.

I love how they turned out!

It was a very enjoyable day with me children.  I love that they are all getting older now and that they are mostly independent when we do these types of activities.  I supply the supplies and then I just let them use their own creativity to decorate.  It's moments like these that I truly treasure.

We have also been doing the 25 Days of Christ Christmas Countdown Advent.  I have really liked it so far.  It gives us an automatic scripture reading every single night as well as discussion questions.