Every year, right after school lets out and before Christmas Day, my family gets a large number of various gifts.  My Dad is a farmer, so we get gifts from businesses that he works with frequently, like fertilizer companies, or farm equipment companies, etc.  And my Mom is a teacher, so she gets gifts from the PTO, from her students, and from other teachers at school.  Sometimes this means we get a wide variety of gifts, but sometimes it means that we get a lot of the same gift….like we did this year.  For my family, this year is the year of the Candy.

*DISCLAIMER* – I love all of the gifts we got….because they are seriously delicious and have made my day every day over the past week….but I think I will have to work out for about 5 hours a day if I keep this up….or I might just replace every food group with Buddy the Elf’s four main food groups…

So back to the gifts we have gotten…..here is an explanation….and a photo.

All of the candy....

• The box on the left at the top, with the bow on it, is from Libs.  They make the most heavenly turtles known to man….which is what is in this box.
• Below that box is the large gold box, which is the box of candy that always comes first to our house….so every year it is the box that we sit around and wait for.  It is from Wolf’s Homemade Candies….and inside there is an amazing mix of every kind of chocolate you could ever want.
• In the middle is a round tin, with homemade candies from one of the students in my Mom’s class.  They are delicious, and they have been my candy of choice for the past two days.
• The white box on the right in the middle is from Charlie’s, which is a local candy shop.  What is amazing about this box is that it came with a bag of their famous caramel corn.  Basically, the goodness keeps on coming.
• Below that box is a box of caramels from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory….which aren’t my favorites, but they are still rather amazing.

So the moral of the story is….even though candies are amazing and delicious…I highly encourage you to give gifts to your loved ones that are not made entirely of sugar.  Just thinking about how much junk I have eaten in the past week and how much I am about to consume in the next few days make me feel like my teeth are rotting out right now.  But….somehow I love it.  Every last bit.