Holiday Spirit

Nothing gets me in the holiday spirit more than getting things checked off the list. While this is a bit sarcastic, it really does feel good to get some stuff done. Some tasks are completed much more efficiently than others. For example, I would say this year's Christmas card and letter went pretty smoothly. While my wife deserves the majority of the credit, there is some footage below of Lucy and I completing the final step in the process, getting the letters mailed. I would say only a couple people where weirded out by me having a camera at the post office.

After mailing some Christmas letters we headed home to bake some cookies. We started with the peanut butter cookies with the kisses in the middle. These cookies went pretty smooth, mainly because the dough was made while Lucy napped. Rolling the dough into balls and eventually putting kisses on the cookies proved to be a manageable task.

When we moved on to the cut outs, this is when we started to get a bit off course. I think it all started with Lucy’s outfit. They say if you want to be professional, you need to look professional. Lucy opted for the Elmo t-shirt, no pants, one red sock, and one white sock look.

Although her dress wasn’t professional, she did come prepared with two main principles she wants to stick with…independence and safety.

She first showed her independence with the spatula. It is a miracle that any of the cookies even closely resemble Christmas Trees or snowmen with the way she was scooping the cutouts. The second independent act was her performance with the frosting and sprinkles. It is currently about 11 hours since I ate my last cut out cookie of the day. It had about an inch of green frosting and another quarter inch of sprinkles on it. I am pleased to say my blood sugar is almost back to a normal level.

From a safety standpoint, she was a self appointed taste tester (an important job for any cookie operation), and she took her job very seriously. As you can see from the pictures below, she even attempted to taste test some sprinkles before they were out of the container.

When it was all said and done we had created some cookies and a lot of memories. Extensive clean up was required and I am sure we will continue to sweep green and red sprinkles out of various crevices in the kitchen for another couple of weeks, but it was all worth it.

After baking, when we were all sugared up, we stepped outside to do some sledding in the backyard!

At the post office

Getting our roll on

Taste tester extraordinaire

Ms. Independent with the Spatula

Various shapes, some even look like snowmen or Christmas trees

Sprinkle taste test

Frosting taste test

Ms. Independent with the sprinkles

Someone had to blaze a trail