After barely catching my breath from the day before, we got up early and went to church Sunday morning, ate lunch and then prepared for our Annual Cookie Cook-Off! The Christmas cookie baking day started about 6 years ago when I found my little nest of four down to one. And for some reason that one, was not with Robby and me on that particular weekend. I was feeling a little down and, as usual, he decided to pull me up outta the dumps (Did I tell you he was good like that?!). The first thing he did was to get on the Internet and choose several cookie recipes. The next thing we did was to head off to the store to buy an ENORMOUS amount of ingredients...I wondered what city we would be baking cookies for; there was NO WAY we could eat everything that he had planned to bake. In the end, every counter was covered with hundreds of cookies that we placed in tins and took to people. It was a great day and it worked; I didn't think about missing my kids at all while I was cooking! I tell ya, this is a great guy I've got here! Anyway, once the kids heard about our adventures in cookie baking, they all decided that they wanted to be involved the next year. And so a new family tradition was born. I snapped some pictures of the now annual "Family" event yesterday to share with you...
This was Parker Ann's first year to be an "Active" participant in the the Cookie Cook-Off.
And "Active", she was! She wanted to bake her cookies FIRST (And, of course, got to...). She put on her Christmas apron, got her step stool out along with a bowl and spoon and declared herself "READY TO BAKE COOKIES"!
Sarah and Aunt Ca Ca attempted to help her.
She took a couple of breaks to "cheese" for the camera.
And YES, this was too tempting to NOT sneak a little taste while Mommy was rolling the cookies out to bake.
Once Parker's cookies were in the oven, everybody else got to take their turn. David decided that he wanted to make his absolute favorite...A Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake!
Robby was on hand to help everyone with everything from "mechanical difficulties" to monitoring the temperature of syrups to rolling and cutting out cookies.
Caitlin and Kevin were up next...Notice how she STILL chose to wear the little furry Christmas apron even though Baby Holli was hanging over the top of it!
Caitlin decided that she had been "Craving" pralines so that is what she and Kevin made.
Ryan and Allison popped in on their way from Texas back to New Orleans. They were both thankfully feeling much better. And although they did not have time to bake cookies with us this year, they did bring a contribution that Allison had made over the weekend...
A bag of white chocolate coated pretzels. YUM!
It was time for me to prepare the ingredients and roll out my dough to made some wonderful Short Bread Cookies. I decided to score them with Christmas cookie cutters.
And here are the finished products...
Parker Ann's Chocolate Chip Cookies
David and Codi's Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
Caitlin and Kevin's Pralines
And my Short Bread Cookies
It was fun getting together to do the Cookie Cook-Off once again. I look forward to having my two new little grandchildren there next year to continue this family tradition of ours!
From OUR FAMILY To YOURS...MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
I hope you all enjoy old and new traditions with your family this year.
No comments