Cookies & Lights

For as long as I can remember, we have gotten together every year at my grandma's house to make Christmas cookies. Using Great Grandma Wasserman's sugar cookie recipe, we cut-out, "paint" and bake our cookies in the shape of santas, reindeer, trees, bells, angels, stars, etc. And the scraps? Well, those are for eating raw... if you can beat my mom to it! I have pictures of myself in diapers hunched over the counter "painting" my cookies.

In recent years, our tradition has dwindled as the grandkids have grown up. But now there's a whole new generation arriving and I want to keep the tradition alive! The way I see it, my kids are so lucky to HAVE great-grandparents and I want to enjoy and appreciate our time with them as much as possible. My grandma is one heck of a role model and I am so proud of her. Family is her top priority and she does an amazing job of keeping us all together. She is so active and kind and beautiful. And I am so happy that my kids get to know her.

Grandma wasn't planning on doing cookies this year. But at my request, she whipped up a half batch of dough and Will got his first experience with the Wasserman Cookie Tradition.




The "paint" is an egg wash with food coloring.

My little Picasso


His masterpieces. What think you of "camo reindeer" or "bleeding dog"?

Mmm! Dough.




More cut-outs. Will kept trying to do it himself. He'd press down only half way, lift, press down again in a slightly different location until the dough was a sliced up mess, and then raise his hands in victory and announce: "I did it! It's a Christmas tree!" Poor grandma, couldn't help but laugh as she rolled out the destroyed dough for the umpteenth time.



Outside, it had begun to snow. Our first flakes of the season! Nothing stuck but they were large and pretty. So Will and I stepped out to feed Grandpa's horse, Nanner, and catch some snowflakes.


Here are some of the finished product. I've always been the grandkid that paints everyones' names on an individual cookie.


Thanks Grandma & Grandpa!


On the way home, we stopped at the pottery store to pick up a special custom plate to put our cookies on for Santa each year. Genoa's very own Jan Pugh is nationally (maybe world?) reknown for her work at Packer Creek Pottery (http://www.packercreekpottery.com/). She even has an ornament on the White House Christmas tree. So our plate has a fat penguin on it and says "Cookies for Santa from Will & Sophia". We had to special order it so I'll post a pic when it's finished. My mom also got the kids each an ornament for the tree and I made a special moment out of finding the perfect placement for each. After we hung Will's on the branch, he looked at the tree and said "It's beauuuuutiful!"

In the evening, when it got dark, we loaded up in the car with our thermos of hot chocolate and drove around to look at lights.


Will said "Look! it's a Christmas tree!" or "Look! it's a Christmas bush!" LOL Of course, the famous house in Oregon topped the charts again. Every inch of the house and lawn is covered - it's like a grid. The pictures don't do justice:



And here's our babysitter's house. Her husband has a mapped-out-plan for all his lights every year and he does a spectacular job. Again, the picture doesn't do justice.

Later at home, we came out to the living room to find this:

He does have pants on but they're shoved up to his crotch from the climb into the seat. Also, notice the (unlevel) stool on the ground beside it. Very resourceful, eh?