Christmastime

Fun things about Christmas-time:

Learning and re-enacting the Christmas story.


Taking lots of pictures with blurry Christmas tree lights in the background.


Baking lots of Christmas cookies... this can sometimes be a frustrating process with kids. I know, it shouldn't be. We should be singing carols together and hugging in between each batch in the oven. Mommy should not be getting extremely annoyed at the kids for letting their sleeves drop into the dough and flour, and then snapping at Rayna for making finger paths through the flour while I was distracted on the phone... Mommy should be relishing in these childhood experiences, even if they are messy and slooooow as the molasses in the gingerbread.
Well, this year, instead of letting them help me throughout the whole thing (which involves a lot of "Wait!" and "Stop!" and "Don't touch that!"), I let the kids have a little piece of dough, a roller, and cookie cutters so they could go to town and carry out the whole process in their own messy sloppy inexact way on their own little piece. Once they got it out of their systems, I could then roll and cut the rest of the cookies more quickly and hopefully keep my children out of therapy when they're grown.
We all had a good time, and then later a sugar overload!

We have had lots of fun this Christmas season and hope you did, too!