Sugar Cookies and random Joy

Last week the kids and I had a couple days to ourselves. I wanted to snuggle on the couch and veg for two days. The kids, however, did not. They had been begging me to make sugar cookies. So, we made a batch of sugar cookies together (i hate when they help me cook so it was huge that I actually let them measure and add ingredients). As we were getting out supplies A.J. realized that we were going to color icing. He wanted to color the actual cookies. Well, when Emily heard that idea she jumped right on board. Not having to make icing was enough for me to quickly agree.

We didn't have very much food coloring left. I googled food coloring cookies just to make sure I wasn't going to start a fire or poison someone. We were good to add it to the dough, but apparently food color paste would work better. It was too cold to go to the store so we just used the plain food coloring. We were down to green and blue. At first, Emily wanted to make teal. I told her a teal cookie grossed me out. We finally agreed on blue cookies. We were aware that it would be lighter but when we added it in it just turned green (yellowish dough). We added a ton of blue but then became bored with it and stopped at a weird green color and decided to make them christmas trees.


So after the cookie dough chilled we rolled them out and baked them. The dough made a TON of cookies and Emily and I wanted to throw half of it away.


Finally, they were finished baking. They were obviously quite flour tasting. Not bad for a 10 and 7 year old 1st timers. We managed to eat them even though they don't have the satisfying sweetness of a chocolate chip cookie. In the end, the cookies were pitiful looking and poor on flavor but we really enjoyed the time together and baking kept us distracted while we missed our Raymond.
In other news at the Blair household:

We put up our trees the day after Thanksgiving. We put an artificial tree in the front room/dining room and a real tree in the family room.


In the past we have gone to a tree farm and picked out a tree but this year we grabbed a $24 tree at walmart. This tree was a Fir rather than a Pine and I am very pleased with it. The needles are quite soft and it has yet to shed on the floor. It fits the idea I have of how a Christmas tree should look and feel.


He is a quick pick of the kids performing an experiment. The balloon is attached to a straw. In the next step they released the balloon and giggled with delight and it flew across the string rope. I'm sure the sound effects added to the delight.

As always, the kids absolutely LOVE to draw and make art. I will be posting about Emily's artwork later this week. Her are a few of A.J. drawings. If you notice, this first picture is of "Cars" characters he copied (not traced) off the back of the video cover. He had really come a long way! I think these are fantastic.
Now this one is my absolute favorite! He drew pictures of all of us. Who needs bangs or eyebrows anyway?!?


Christ is so faithful, I hope you make Him the focus of your Christmas Season <3