Christmas cookies

We've had so much craziness going on this past week, I was beginning to wonder if we would be able to pull it all off. We had heating problems, a stink in the house we couldn't pinpoint, and greenery to cut down for wreath making. We had my son's birthday, my first grandbaby was born, and our Christmas cookie decorating event. In amongst these major events were baking, dinner parties to attend to, decorating, and a scrapbooking album for 2007 to make for my mother-in-law. But some how, some way, we pulled it all off. Or almost. I'm still working on the scrapbook and we still need to go cut a tree.

Our cookie decorating party is no small event. You're looking at a ten hour ordeal over a two-day period!

It started with just my daughter and me getting together to decorate cookies. But now we include other female members of the family. This year we missed Michelle, who was busy having a baby, but Shodie, my nephew's significant other, was happy to join us.

I make the sugar cookie dough the day before, so all we have to do is decorate the next day. The dough is chilled for hours before it's rolled out and cookie cutters get busy. This year it turned out to be so much more work. Imagine yourself in your red holiday bib apron, rolling out cookie dough. And the phone rings. It's baby news. You're not on the phone long but long enough for the dough, that's supposed to be chilled when rolled, is now soft, gooey, and sticking to the counter. So you pull it all up, re-flour the counter, and start over. If you're lucky, you have time to cut the cookies out and get them in the oven before the phone rings again. More baby news. You forget about the cookies in the oven so now you have burned sugar cookies.... But you don't give up. You take another handful of dough out of the fridge, roll it out, cut it out, and, yep, the phone rings again. More baby news. Once more, you try to lift all the gooey, soft dough up from the counter, re-flour, and start over. This goes on for literally hours. We're talking hours. For five hours I struggled to get these cookies cut out and baked. FIVE HOURS!

I'm covered in flour from head to toe. My apron is covered in flour from wiping my hands every time the phone rings. The floor is a floury mess. The phone was covered in flour and dough as was the front of the stove. I had such a mess going everywhere and couldn't fully concentrate on any aspect of it.

Eventually the cookies got baked, my grandbaby was born, and all was well. Day One of our annual cookie event was officially over.

Day Two is another five hour day reserved solely for decorating the cookies, visiting, laughing, and munching on the ones that get broken. It's definitely a highlight of my year; any time I get to spend with my children making memories is special.

In a couple years we'll have four new little hands helping us.... I can only imagine the flour that will be flying!