Sure do like those Christmas Cookies, sugar!

Another Christmas tradition: sugar cookies. The boys LOVE to make and frost them. The past couple years Gamma and Poppy have been here to help put the icing on in an all-hands-on-deck scenario to just get it done. What has happened is Finley struggled making them without them this year, especially when it came time for the icing. We weren't sure we would have time to do the icing if we waited  for Gamma and Poppy and we struck while the iron was hot (read: Maclyn was taking a good nap) so unfortunately they arrived to our house to fully decorated Christmas cookies. Finley actually handled this better than we imagined he would. So did Poppy and Gamma. Haha! (they may have planned it that way....)

Oh the floury mess.......I won't lie, it nearly sent me over the edge.

Time to decorate!!

I won't lie, Josh's cookies were the prettiest! And they were also the first to be eaten!

Santa! I know him!!

While we were in Walmart one random day we ran into Santa Clause. The boys LOVED it. But it caught both of them off guard and so they didn't know what to "ask" for. It did spurn on a strong desire to "go see Santa" from both of the boys as well as a noticeable questioning of the truth of Santa from Keagan...

The week before Christmas came and I realized that we still hadn't taken the boys to sit on Santa's lap. I scrambled and called Patti's to see if they had reservations because I knew we could see Santa there. Luckily they actually had an opening for late that afternoon so after work we got ready and headed to see Santa! We quizzed the boys on what they'd be asking Santa for...and didn't really understand Finley's gift and Keagan wouldn't tell us. I asked him if he wanted to write Santa a letter. He said he would just tell him, but he wasn't going to tell us. That stinker. Well, long-story short, he whispered it to Santa and (thankfully!) Mrs. Clause came through with the information. There was one small problem. When we compared what they told S.C. to what was in the Toys R Us Wishbook, we realized Santa wasn't gonna be bringing their desired toys: $200 Nerf gun RC models/drones. Um............

At Patti's 1880 Settlement Restaurant:

Finn's eyes crack me up when they brought our dessert! Check out the height of that meringue!

After supper we went directly to see Santa and the lights outside! Take note of Keagan's sneaky whispering to Santa what he wanted. This cracked us up...he really didn't want us knowing what he asked for!!  (check out Santa's eyes........um. strange?)

Gingerbread Boys

Christmas traditions are always fun. This year is probably the first year that the boys expected certain things to happen from years past. I thoroughly enjoyed their expectations because that meant that they remembered all the little things that I had done in years past. One thing that they remembered doing, and insisted on tackling again, was gingerbread houses. Keagan read some stories in school about a gingerbread boy that ran away so he also wanted to make gingerbread boy cookies. This year I let the boys completely take the reigns on their houses and cookies, and just provided the decorations and icing then walked away. (well, I did assemble the houses and bake the cookies...) I was scared of the messes that would be made but tried to tell myself that it could be cleaned. And to my surprise, they did a pretty good job of keeping the mess and icing and sprinkles contained. And they did a fantastic job decorating their gingerbread creations!!

Silly Faces!