New Year's cookies

If you were expecting me to start off the year with goals and reflections and resolutions, you were wrong.  My new year doesn't start until next week--after this weekend's blood drive--and even then I'm not sure how much blogging on goals and reflections and resolutions I will get to.  I still need to finish my to-do list from last May!  And I added some very important things to that to-do list in the fall.  But all of that has been on hold during the family fun of the holidays and while I struggle to figure out how to be an event planner.

So I don't have goals for you, but I do have cookies!

We were throwing up over the holidays this year.  BUT we were very blessed (thank you, God) to all be feeling pretty much just fine on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  So we had a wonderful, intimate family celebration.  Unfortunately, we did have to cancel our Christmas Eve Eve cookie decorating extravaganza.  (I love this tradition!)  And we didn't get it rescheduled until New Year's Eve Eve.

That's when Cousin Deserae and Cousin Mikhael came over to help us decorate cookies--and to spoil my kids with cool Christmas presents and spoil me by having their deliciously adorable baby boy in my house.  (How did I not get pictures?????  Their son, Elim, is so cute.  Not just Regular Baby Cute--but Every Trip to the Grocery Store Takes Thrice as Long Because Everyone Wants to Stop and Admire Your Baby and Really He Should Be on TV Cute.  How did I not get pictures?????)  We all had a great time visiting with them!  (When they left, and took their baby with them, David said, "We really should get our own cute baby--that way he wouldn't have to go home."

Here are a few of David's creations from the evening.

My favorite is the Wisconsin cookie.  And how can you not love the Packers snow man?

The next day--New Year's Eve--we did it again with a few little friends.  Among the crowd were David and Bailey.  After they decorated a few cookies, I found them hiding behind the Christmas tree trading Pokemon cards and gossiping about the girls in their class.

We adhere to the school of kid-friendly cookie decorating in this house: thick butter cream frosting, lots of sprinkles, and toppings like M&Ms and gummy bears.  It ain't pretty.  But it's fun.  Perhaps too fun...

This is Mary on the job.

 

And, yes, this is what a Christmas cookie looks like at our house...

Sheesh.  You think I would have learned what happens when I put sprinkles in the hands of my kids and leave them unattended.

Oh well.  New Year's cookies were a fun way for my kids to celebrate the coming of the new year.

As for me, my celebrating doesn't begin until next week.  See you then.



P.S.  As always, a big huge thank you to Greg!  We volunteered to put on the science fair at David's school this year.  It's in March.  Piece of cake, right?  Little did I realize that the bulk of the planning and coordinating would happen the week of the blood drive I'm coordinating!!  My little brain and my calendar can only handle so much. So Greg has been Mr. PTO this week, filling in where I can't right now--meeting with the PTO president and attending PTO meetings.  What a hero.  (He is also meeting with the PTO president at Mary's school.  But that's his own doing--he has some definite opinions on how you organize a springtime fundraising run.)  Who wants to work on a dissertation when you can hang out with PTO presidents in coffee shops?