Preparing for Christmas

O Come Let us Adore Him!

We baked our cookies in 2 separate weekends. We needed to get some done to get packaged and shipped out but we also wanted to bake with Emma so we did a 2nd round when Emma could come home the weekend before finals.

Johanna and Bridget were my main bakers the first weekend and they were great in the kitchen. They both enjoyed adding ingredients into our oatmeal chocolate chips cookies and were astonished at the sheer mass of dough. We did the 7 layer bars first, it is one of the simplest recipes and is my holiday favorite. It has been a tradition since the girls were little and it has always been my favorite to make with little helpers. The pressing of the graham cracker crust takes a little finesse, but only Hanna needed help on that this year. Bridget worked at it until it was beautiful, all on her own. Then it is just pouring 1 cup full of each ingredient. I hope they continue to make these as they grow up and move out. The sugar cookies though are the girls favorites to make. The rolling and cutting and decorating is a creative endeavor I love to watch. Jim assisted Johanna on her batch this year. Her first tray was all blue and then she sat down for a 2nd tray and meticulously placed pearl balls on a stocking cookie, following the example of her sisters. Megan had been out shopping with Jim for the first part but was there to roll and decorate sugar cookies. Rachael also came in and did a very efficient pan of Christmas tree cookies and a pan of 7 layers. I set aside ingredients for Emma to do a pan of bars the following weekend and also refrigerated sugar cookie dough.

The next weekend Johanna had a Christmas program at the church of her preschool. She had been practicing the songs for weeks and was really excited to perform. Emma came home for the program and the whole family squeezed into the church to watch. The "Follow the Signs" program was very well done. Hanna's class was a herd of sheep and they sang "No Vacancy". They wore white and had sweet ear pieces. They were on the altar for the main songs and then were herded to a space in front of the manger. They also sang "Away in a Manger" and "Come Follow Me". Hanna sang as she moved in her space, and physically bounded down the aisle during the recessional. It was a wonderful  experience to share in.

The next morning we were going to go out to pick up our tree and decorate, but we awoke to thick ice on our road and terrible reports of accidents. We decided to stay home and instead did our cookie baking. Emma did her pan of bars, while Meg, Bridge and I did chocolate cookies. Then Emma and Rachael worked the refrigerated dough to roll out more sugar cookies. It was a process to roll out but they stuck with it. Emma made a pan of star wars cookies and Rachael personalized a whole pan. Jim helped do a pan with Hanna and made sure to get a few Millennium Falcons in there.

When the roads cleared up a little went to buy our tree. It was not ideal as the trees were covered in ice and the ground was a slushy mess. Luckily Megan wore her snow gloves and was helpful standing and inspecting trees. Jim and Rachael, and then everyone tossed frozen slush at each other. This was interrupted by Hanna who had an accident and peed in a pile of snow. That made us focus and get the task done. I brought her out to the van to clean her up, while Jim and the girls paid for te tree and bought a bunch of succulents in the process.

The tree was too wet to decorate right away so we stood it up in the living room on a tablecloth surrounded by towels. It dripped in our warm living room but it was still not ready to be decorated, prior to Emma's evening plans. So we decided to get up and decorate before church in the morning.

The morning decorating worked out really well. The girls unpacked their ornaments and proceeded to hang them. Emma clustered her Snow Buddies and the tree looked immediately crowded, but there were of course plenty of branches on our Fraser fir to fit more and more ornaments. Rachael was feeling overwhelmed and asked for help to get her ornaments onto the tree. There were lots of willing elves.  Hanna was most interested in anyone's ornament that made noise, but controlled her excitement. In the end the tree looked like "our tree" changing and similar every year.

I am so glad we were able to do it together. We then went to Mass together, which I had forgotten was said for my mom. After Mass Emma went back to TU to work on her final projects and studying for exams.