Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Visiting Santa

I could not believe it, but I actually found a place that would give you a picture, and let you take your own picture for free with Santa. There have been a few years where I didn't get any pictures of the kids with Santa because they were too expensive.

Last year when we went to see Santa London was the only one who would willingly go and sit on his lap. This year all four kids sat with Santa, and Jacob and London actually talked to him.

London said that she wanted more ponies to play with.

Jacob asked for cars and airplanes.
Joseph said nothing, but did steal a few glances at the big guy before getting off of his lap.

Guinevere stared at me the whole time. I don't think she even realized she was sitting on someones lap. As I put her down I assured Santa that she had a dry freshly changed diaper, he gave me a little laugh at that.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Guinevere's Birthday

We recently celebrated Guinevere's 1st Birthday. I can not believe how quickly this past year has gone by. Perhaps I will be saying this forever, but it feels like just yesterday that we were bringing her home from the hospital. I am amazed at how quickly she is growing.

I love the dirty look she is giving the candle in this picture. She just stared at it for the longest time, and then right on cue for the end of the song she tried to grab it.

This is one of the only pictures that we got of her actually looking up at the camera.

She was not a big fan of the cake. She tried some of it, and sort of pushed it around on the tray, and then cried to get down.


My grandma is frequently out of town, so we were pretty excited that she was able to be here for Guinevere's first birthday. This is her with my Aunt Brenda.


It was a short, quite, simple party, but that was all right with me and the birthday girl.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Christmas Cookies

On Friday I decided to be brave and dareing by make sugar cookies with the kids all by myself. Some of you that don't know me that well probably think this is not really that big of a deal. For those of you who know me, you know that I can be quite annal about how my cookies turn out, and anything less then perfection in this area can put me in a bad mood for a few hours at least. Fearlessly I embraced the Christmas spirit and started making the cookie dough. Guinevere was the first to protest, and insisted on being able to see what was going on. Having a baby on the kitchen counter made this process much slower then I would have liked, but I pressed on.


Having plenty of open counter space and two new small rolling pins I put aprons on all the kids, let them flour there work area, and gave them each a ball of dough. My grand plan was that London and Jacob would do fairly well with minimal supervision while I worked on the other side of the counter with Joseph and the big rolling pin. The minimal supervision thing went right out the window, but with a lot of help they did manage to roll out there dough to varying thicknesses and then begin cutting out the cookies.


Joseph it turned out was not too happy that I would be helping him. He thought this was going to be more like playing playdough, where you roll it out cut out some shapes and then roll it out again. He was none too patient, and while I was on the other side of the counter he started to collect all the dough back into a ball before I was able to get the cut out shapes on to a pan to bake. After that I gave him a much smaller ball of dough and just let him have fun.


As I tried to help the kids with there dough I accidentally sat my cup of flour too close to Guinevere, who insisted on still sitting on the counter, and she promptly dumped it all over herself and the counter.

After each of the children had rolled the dough out a few times I felt that dough and my nerves could not take much more, so I sent them all to wash up while I cut out the remaining cookies.

That afternoon while Guinevere was asleep I allowed the kids to decorate the cookies how ever they wanted. I only intervened here or there when the frosting was so thick that it looked like it might break the cookie, or the sprinkles so thick that you could no longer see the cookie.

London was very proud of the cookie that she decorated to look like her. Can you all see the likeness? The huge eyes, and the two green dots in her hair as rubberbands.

Overall, everyone had a good time, and I survived with my sanity. Even though the cookies do not look perfect, and some are a little thicker then others, they still taste really good. Let this be a lesson to me that perfection is not necessary. Hopefully this posting has encouraged, not discouraged, others from making sugar cookies with there young children. Happy Baking!