Cookie Making

Having my Dad in town for Christmas is always nice, but stressful.

My sisters and I have to try to sync all of our schedules to be able to enjoy his visit together. 

We wouldn't mind just having individual time with our Dad, but he always wants to visit us all together.

Again, this process can become very frustrating.

He used to only come up for a few days...(and not that I am complaining because I love seeing him), but this year he was up for ten days!

While I madly arranged arranged our schedule we tried to be apart of the activities that went on while Dad was in town.

One of the many festive activities we got to partake in while in Portland for the holiday, was decorating sugar cookies.

Aunt Jen made a great arrangement of icing colors. She also had a boat load of sprinkles and other fun stuff to decorate with.

Aunt Jen's tree. She took the kids out and cut it down all by herself.

 Jen pretending to stab Dad....

Some of the cousins eating lunch before the baking got started...

 Jen made some guacamole, using her own special recipe.

 Prepping all the frosting for the cookies.

 Grandpa and August working side by side.

 August had fun playing with the cookie cutters too!

 Grandpa encouraged him to eat the dough...

 August discovered how the rolling pin felt on his belly. Never mind the flour all over his shirt

 The two youngest waiting patiently to be able to decorate. The older cousins were there, but not very interested in the "making" cookies process. I left out the pictures of them wresting in the living room

 I made Elysia a small cookie with an "E" on it. It's always amazing how easy it is to make the kids feel special and excited.

 Most of cookies were reasonably decorated. There were some with frosting caked almost a quarter of an inch. Ugh, so much frosting....

I started helping out with the decorating, so I didn't get as many pics of the finished cookies. Jen did. I will get some photos from her to put on here later.

It was nice decorating the cookies and then sitting around watching the Christmas Story while eating dinner.