Too Much Candy

It all started with the gingerbread house project. I must admit that I use the term "gingerbread" very loosely in this instance, because of course I didn't really make gingerbread, I used graham crackers. That's what my mom does, and her little cottages always turn out adorably cute--straight out of Hansel and Gretel. The ones we made, however, were not so cute. I was rushed. Due to my poor planning I found myself in the middle of 8 eager children with only one frosting bag. And so the houses had to go up quickly, and the crackers were broken, and there wasn't time to stabilize the structures. And so we made gingerbread shanties, and I didn't post pictures on the family website.

Matt was in charge of the candy. Usually when I send Matt to the store I have to give him a very detailed list, sometimes explaining what various items are and in which section of the store he can find them. He usually sighs and asks if it is really a good idea to send him because he might get the wrong thing, and don't I really want to go instead? Not this time. "Candy," he said, "got it." And he was gone in a flash. He returned with several grocery bags and I knew we were in trouble. After all of the shanties were made and decorated, and after little 20-pound Ava Mecham quietly ate more than three times her weight in jelly beans and no one noticed but Matt (who had her back and didn't alert her parents)--even after all of that, we still had 10 large bowls of candy sitting on our kitchen table.

Then there was Christmas morning and Santa and the stockings and more candy arrived.

And I was in charge of the family Christmas program and for some reason I let Matt's aunt Carole convince me that it would be a good idea to play the candy bar game--don't get me wrong, it is a really fun game and everyone loves it. However, I didn't think about the candy. My little family, Cora and Sydney included, happened to play very well this year and we all walked away with 2 or 3 king-sized candy bars EACH. And to top it off, the girls got candy in some of their gifts that night.

And somewhere along the way, and I don't know when it happened, we aquired a 10 pound bag of Swedish fish.

So I guess this post is really actually a plea--come over and eat my candy. Take it home with you, decorate the house you live in with it, feed it to your pets, make a candy bar poster and ask someone to prom--please, just make it go away.

Thank you, and good night.