The Christmas Cookies are frosted and we are on a sugar high!

This is a Christmas scene of sorts. That brown animal is Dominic the Donkey made especially for Tizita and Uncle Chedda. Th Santa is a brown Santa for Tizita.

Here are two mittens. Can you guess which one is Mal's and which is mine?

Sorry it's fuzzy, but this is Mallory's best piece of art. I questioned why she wanted a turkey for Christmas I think it was just so she could decorate it! Courtney would have been proud of the time Mallory took to do this one cookie!

The finished cookies. My girls will be able to pick out which ones I decorated and which ones Mal did.

For many years, ever since the girls were little we have baked cookies. We always came over to my mom and dad's house to bake for several reasons:
My mom always watched the stove so the cookies never burned
My mom always did the dishes as we worked so we never had to clean up
My mom never cared how much flour and other ingredients we got on her green kitchen carpet. She always cleaned it all up.
We always made our favorites like No Names, spritz, chocolate chips, and ended with white sugar cookies. The flour really flew then! Alissa always wore navy blue or black so she could wipe flour all over herself. (Even in College she wore dark colors for the same reason) Mallory joined us as soon as she was old enough to help out. When my dad was alive I am sure he cringed as he saw his kitchen being dirtied up so badly! Luckily he stayed out of our way and suffered in silence.

Now John and I live in that house along with my mom so I don't encourage the flour messes quite so much. The green carpet has been replaced with linoleum, but my mom still watches th cookies bake, does the dishes, and cleans up. Last year Paul and Nathan joined in the decorating fun. We had cut out six of each design and each of us decorated one of each kind. We then had a competition judged by John, my mom and Kev. They picked their favorites of each catagory. Don't remember who won, but chances are it was usually Mal or Courtney and let me tell you why. Both of these ladies take so much time on each cookie whereas Alissa and I just frost and throw on sprinkles. Alissa and I do ten cookies to Mal and Courtney's one!

One other note. We always start out so gunho on decorating and then about halfway through we get so sick of it all and we also get very hyped up from the sugar high. I remember my girls just running around the house like crazy women when they were little after licking the frosting.
Oh the memories of cookie baking and frosting. This year Mallory and I worked alone with my mom cleaning up our messes. Mal wore an Illinois Wesleyan blue shirt and got flour on it in honor of Alissa. She also made some beautiful cookies in honor of Courtney. Even is they couldn't be here to bake with us, we felt their spirits here in all we did. Time to go taste test a few cookies now!