Celebrating Jesus' Birthday

Christmas Eve morning, Hannah came to me with a conspiratoral whisper and asked if we could make Christmas Tree Cookies. Well, I had already been planning to make a special dessert with her for celebrating Jesus' birthday, so I punted on the original recipe, and we made sugar cookies. :o) I must say, multiple things made these delicious cookies MUCH easier than last year:

1. Peter was out shopping with Daddy.
2. Hannah and I used a sugar cookie mix I had picked up for almost nothing earlier in the month. Not only did it not have to be refrigerated, but it also made only 30 cookies. Much easier than 130!
3. I had a proper cookie spatula.
4. Hannah wanted Christmas Trees, i.e. we didn't need bells and candycanes and stars and every other shape under the sun.
5. Christmas Trees are green. And only green. This means we had ONE color of icing.

All that said, we had quite a fun morning making cookies while Daddy and Peter found last minute deals.

We turned the cookies into a "birthday cake" for Jesus. :o) (And I still have the ingredients for my other dessert which we'll make at a later time.) :o)

Christmas Eve dinner was a culinary delight of hot dogs and homemade macaroni and cheese. :o)

We also enjoyed opening our "table gifts"--growing up, these were special gifts you got to open up at Christmas dinner as your very last gift of the day. With just a minor adjustment, we've continued the tradition . . .

After dinner we read the Christmas Story in Luke 2 and sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus. What a joy to keep Christ at the center of our Christmas celebrations!

We also made our annual trek to enjoy Christmas lights. Usually we just tour housing developments, but this year we enjoyed a special light show in the area.

I love this picture! They were fascinated by the glowing ribbon on the "gifts" in the sleigh.

And here's my two little snowpeople!

And after the kids were safely tucked in bed and sound asleep, Chris and I continued our annual tradition of bringing out the gifts and then taking a picture of us. :o)

And here's our littlest one at 23 weeks . . . :o)

Merry Christmas!

We pray that you also enjoyed a blessed day celebrating the birth of our Savior!