Christmas Eve

Today the girls had a cookie baking party hosted by . . . me.  I invited a couple families of school-aged children to bring their favorite cookie recipe and come over.  Luckily I thought to make a batch of cookie dough for spritz cookies so they would have some cookies to shape and decorate as soon as they got here.  Those are the green ones in the picture.

We also made some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (the guests were amazed at the huge container of chocolate chips I have--it's about 5 pounds) and some lemon cookies (minus the lemon because I didn't have any, but plus lime juice and orange zest).

I made a pot of hot chocolate and piled a plate with cookies.  We ate those, then the kids played outside, then took plates of cookies home with them.  My girls thought it was very fun.  You can see the cookies on the plate Caroline made for Santa.

Dh took ds to the airport in the big city.  He's going to spend Christmas with his mother and sisters.

I took the girls and went to Costco.  I know, I know.  But it wasn't as crazy as I thought it was going to be.  The main thing I needed was some tamales for dinner tonight.  I picked up a few other things as well (huh--just try not to).  The girls tried some fun food samples and had a good time.

When dh got home, he took the girls to Best Buy.  Elizabeth has been saving money for a number of months and has enough to buy an iTouch or a Kindle Fire or something like that.  She's leaning toward the Kindle, and today is the day for the purchase.

Tonight we'll enjoy a delicious tamale dinner (I know it'll be delicious because the tamales were being sampled at Costco ;-) ), then dh and I will negotiate about going to the late night church service at the Catholic church in our neighborhood.  Last year a man sitting near us fainted and the paramedics worked on him in the aisle during most of the service.  Maybe it would be a little less "interesting" this year.

Merry Christmas!