Christmas Eve at My Parent's House

We had a little time before we were supposed to go to my parent's house for Christmas Eve festivities, so we made our reindeer food. This year, we didn't have any oat meal so we used bread crumbs...Italian flavored (hope it didn't mess up the reindeer's digestive tracks). We also added sprinkles to add some pizazz.

 

We also had time for her to open one present from each of us.

I got her a craft supply storage unit that she'd asked for filled with crafting supplies.

Russell got her the Nerf gun that she'd been seeing in the stores...the pink version.

Then we were off to my parent's house for Christmas Eve dinner.

Here's Sophia opening presents from her Great-Grandma Dorothy.

Then we did our gift exchange for the adults. We each bought a $10 gift and did the whole stealing, drawing numbers thing.

Russell kept getting the shaft on this game.

Robin got  my gift...one of those shavers for the bikini line, nose etc.

Unfortunately everyone kept wanting to test it.

Then it was Bingo time with the master of ceremonies, Tim.

After all of that, we headed home around 10....just in time to throw out the reindeer food and out cookies and milk for Santa.

I have to say, Christmas is much more fun with a child.

Christmas Eve Begins

On Christmas Eve morning, we finally got around to making Christmas sugar cookies. This year, I went the easy route and bought the pre-mixed (dry) packages of sugar cookie mix on the baking aisle. They worked great! We mixed the dough the night before and put it in the fridge overnight. This morning, we rolled out the dough.

 

Of course, Sophia's favorite part was sneaking bites of the cookie dough.

We used parchment paper to line our baking pans.

Next up was icing them.

Sophia was very meticulous.

And after 3 cookies, was very bored. She left the rest to me.

She tried one of the pink iced angels and it made a huge mess in her hand.

We have decided to change our tradition for next year. Since none of us really like eating them, and it's kind of pain to make, we're making cookies we actually like to eat. We'll start researching and pinning those recipes now. I'm headed to Pinterest now to create a board solely for cookies.