Christmas Eve

Sad sleepy face from a bad night of rest.  At least he has a car to play with!

All the kids and I were sick the week prior to Christmas.  Kayden started the week with croup and the rest of us slowly fell to bad colds.  Christmas Eve, Keeley and Killian woke up snotty with coughs and Kayden was running a fever.  We had to cancel most of our plans because I didn't want anyone else to have the yuck that we had. The kids and I stayed home while Kelly went to brunch at Aunt Alice's and then we skipped the Christmas service at church and just stayed home and decorated cookies with Oma.  

Alice had purchased presents for the kids and sent them home with Kelly.  The girls' presents were in bags and they got to them and opened the presents as soon as they were under the tree...making me glad we had not put any presents out this year.  Killian is still too little to open his by himself very well so I got to help.

I have everyone's attention!  And no one is crying.  That doesn't happen often...

The girls take over but Killian seem okay with it.

Making a break for the tree.  Good thing big sister is there to slow him down.

Checking to see if we are watching...

And off again.  This time Kayden moves over to help out!

Keeley joins him to see what is so interesting.

"What?  I'm so cute.  How could I be trouble"

"Are you watching?  Both my sisters are distracted with my toy.  Maybe I'll make a run for it."

"Yes, I think I will..."

"Busted!"

Here the girls are playing with Killian's toy while he hangs out in his garden (right next to Keeley).

Not sure if he is happy or not, but at least he is getting to play with one of his toys by himself!

This year we had more time to make cookies since we didn't go to the service.  Usually I just make the break apart sugar cookies and the girls frost them.  Because we had more time, the girls made them from scratch with Oma and then decorated them.

Taking turns adding ingredients and turning on the mixer.

So interested in the process!

Scraping the spatula so carefully.

The girls did great as long as there was something for each of them to do.

 

 

While the dough chilled, we did our Christmas exchange with Oma.  The girls obviously needed to help her open her presents!  The girls received charms to add to their charm bracelets but I forgot to take a picture!  The each received a turtle to remind them of my dad (their Poppy) because he really liked turtles.

Then it was time to roll out the dough.  Wolf ears were clearly needed.

There was a little more flour used than Oma intended...

And yet Kayden is adding even more!

They wanted to use their play-doh cookie cutters instead of the Christmas ones.

 And this is the point where I went to nurse baby brother and put him to sleep.  I'm pretty sure the girls took advantage of me being out of the room.  Oma doesn't have quite as many rules as Mom does....

Obviously she needs to taste the icing.

Concentrating on decorating.

There is a cookie underneath all that icing.  The icing is the best part anyway, right?

Oh my.

Finished products.  That is a lot of cookies for Santa!

And the wolf shot :-)

Our plans may have been completely thrown out the window, but we made it through the day with lots of smiles and memories.  All and all a great Christmas Eve!