Cookie Night . . .

Last night was Christmas Cookie Night – one of our oldest family traditions.  For the uninitiated, Christmas was very hectic when Blake and I were little – Christmas Eve was spent with our dad’s family, and Christmas Day with our mom’s.  So “Christmas Eve Eve” was for us – we made cookies and each of us got to open one present.  It was our family night.  And it still is – we still have Christmas with Mom and Dad on Christmas Eve Eve.  But over the years, Cookie Night took on a life of its own.  There was a time when we wondered if we had all outgrown it – and our boys quickly vetoed that idea, telling us that Cookie Night was their favorite Christmas activity.  And after Mom’s good report on Wednesday, it was truly a celebration.

I learned something last night.  The cookie cutters with handles are the originals from when I was little – we had a Christmas tree, a Santa, a star, a bell, and we used a biscuit cutter to make circles so I could make a wreath.  Last night, two more appeared for the first time – a bunny and a chicken.  No one seems to know where they came from, but they are definitely part of the original set.  And we have come up with lots of other shapes over time.

We all take turns cutting out shapes (and sometimes freeforming them).  For the first time, this year we also used peppermint cookie dough.  Ryan’s girlfriend Emily (who unfortunately had her wisdom teeth pulled on Tuesday and couldn’t attend) thought it was sacrilege when she heard that we used storebought cookie dough and insisted that she should make homemade.  We had to convince her that decorating the cookies was what was important – we rarely eat them after we’re finished.  Can you imaging eating a big cookie that’s just coated with icing?

 

Soon it was time to decorate.  I was helping Mom in the kitchen (and taking pictures), so I didn’t even think I was going to sit down and grab icing – until Blake and the boys insisted that I do my traditional wreath cookie . . .

The only picture I ended up getting of the wreath was from a distance, so the “berries” really aren’t visible.  At right is Ryan’s favorite entry – a cross between Chick-Fil-A and Pac-Man, I guess.

Another of my favorites was my nephew Conner turning a bat into a bowtie.  And here are all of this year’s creations.  You may notice that most of them don’t have traditional shapes – all of the dough seemed to spread out in the oven so we had to improvise a lot!

Strange development – we were finished and cleaning up the kitchen when we discovered that one pan of cookies went unbaked.  My nephew Tyler didn’t seem to care . . .