Christmas Cooking

In the week before Christmas is seems like we did nothing but cooking!

We had our wild weekend of Christmas activities, followed by a wild week of Christmas cooking, followed by the actual event. It was fast, furious and fun.

First we said good bye to one of our in home staff members that week, so she brought cookies to bake and decorate her last night with us.

Audrey diligently decorated each cookie. She was very into this activity.

Nat on the other hand only wanted to make each of his cookies look like a ball of some sort...

Basketball,

Baseball,

Golf Ball,

You name a ball, he wanted it!

But it was a simple and fun activity to do with the kids.

(and PLEASE do not look at the backgrounds of the pictures... my house was in SHAMBLES, but come on, it was just days before Christmas!)

The finished masterpieces!

The next day I needed the kids to stay busy while I finished up tons of things I had to do (you know, prep for Christmas Eve dinner, wrap presents, finish teacher, staff and doctor gifts and all of that..) So I found these cool kits at Trader Joe's and had Reb do them with the kids while I worked around them!

Audrey, once again, was totally into it.

And I did FINALLY get Nathaniel engaged in the activity too!

See my end of the table? I was baking bread and wrapping presents while watching them :)

Caught you girlie!!

Looking at these pictures I am noticing the kids are wearing the exact same pjs... but REALLY these were two different nights! And yes, my children own more than one set of pjs each!

The finished people!

Nathaniel, while resistant to start, ended up having a BLAST with this activity! Reb.... oh what to say? I am going to be so LOST without this guy in a few months! I ADORE him and can not imagine our care team without him. Insert heart break here! But his gingerbread person is ADORABLE! And darling Audrey, so proud of her creation!

This was seriously a great activity! I am going to have to look for it again next year :)

I baked lots of loafs of bread while the kids were busy....

After all we have LOTS of doctors and therapist we work with ALL the time!

And I finished off the homemade canned Apple Pie Filling for teachers, in home staff and special friends. I was very please with our very inexpensive, yet yummy and useful gifts this year.  Banana bread made out of boxes of bananas that were given to us, and Apple Pie Filling made from more free apples! And they looked cute too I think :)

I did not bake cookies this year like I usually do, and I kind of missed that, but to be honest this was so much easier and I needed easy this year!