Times may be tough, but that's no reason to forget our wonderful school bus drivers this holiday season.

I feel bad saying this, but I can hardly stand the noise from two children being obnoxious in the car, so an entire bus full of children would be completely out of the question.

We usually fill a tin with trinkets, but this year, my boys and I decided to get creative with Christmas gifts for their amazing bus drivers.

We bought cute plastic boxes, pretzels and chocolate almond bark to make homemade chocolate covered pretzels.

The plan was to make the pretzels Thursday night, but I was afraid they'd take forever or something would go wrong, so we got a jump on the process and made them Tuesday night. Friday is the last day of school before Winter break.

At first, the process was pretty slow and the kids were no help. I was afraid of them touching anything!

But they were patient and watched and learned. Near the end they figured out how to manage the two-fork-no-touching-the-food process. We listened to Christmas music and laughed at the song 'Nuttin' for Christmas.'

When we were done, they even pre-washed the forks to make the dishwasher's job easier.

It was a really fun evening with my little guys.