This Christmas, we haven’t been baking as much as usual due to general tiredness and lack of motivation to clean up after the total kitchen destruction that is certain to take place anytime Samantha and Amelia get a hold of flour and frosting. However, we did manage to do some gingerbread house decorating and some cookies, which I’m calling good for the year.
The girls love to be in the kitchen and can often be found with pots, pans, whisks and spatulas, cooking up their own creations while I’m making lunch or dinner. They also love to help make smoothies, pancakes and prepare their own snacks, particularly if it involves anything to do with cutting or spreading with knives– eek!
Just look at that concentration.
I’m not sure how much candy actually made it onto the house as it kept mysteriously disappearing.
A gingerbread masterpiece, complete in all its high fructose corn syrup glory. The girls were happy with just a piece of the gingerbread and then were content to look at it on top of the fridge for a week before I finally threw it out. Jake could always judge my stress level that day when he got home by how many little pieces I had broken off and nibbled on!
In addition to baking, the girls helped put up our lights, tree and other decorations this year.
Somehow we only have about 1/3 of the ornaments on our tree right now as we did two weeks ago. The temptation to pull them off is still very strong for a 2.5 year old, apparently.
This year, Jake took the girls to pick out our tree again, but this time, there were no meltdowns!
The magic of picking out a tree 2014:
Tree (un) decorating 2014:
More baking! Jodi brought over her famous sugar cookies for Samantha, Amelia, Maliyah and Allie to decorate.
Maliyah and Allie have some serious decorating skills and kept their decorating stations miraculously nice and neat. The girls’ areas, in comparison, looked like a nuclear sprinkle bomb went off. I gave up trying to teach them that the entire sprinkle can did not need to end up on one cookie.
Allie very carefully places her ONE sprinkle on her cookie.
Sprinkle overload!
The crazed look of a cookie monster.
Flashback to holiday baking 2014:
Holiday cookie eating 2014:
Speaking of holiday sweetness, Baby Maple made her grand debut at the beginning of December and when Phi texted Amy and me to come meet her one day during nap time, we ran over as fast as possible! There’s nothing like holding a precious newborn to make your heart melt! Especially when I’m not sleep deprived with my own precious newborn!
Squeal! The sweetest baby ever.
We’re down to the single digits– eight more weeks to go!
Lots of love,
