Traditions Old & New

Christmas is the ninja of all holidays. Or at least it is in our house. One minute I'm peacefully going about my business, half-heartedly thinking about gifts, a tree, mailing cards, etc. The next minute BLAM! I've got 48 hours in which to complete my shopping, wrap the presents, ship them out to those who live far away...forget the tree, no room in the house anyway. We'd have to leave it on the porch.

Okay, so it wasn't quite that bad this year. One of the fringe benefits of staying home with Eily has been having the time to prepare for things like Christmas without feeling like I'm in a race I'll never win. I finished purchasing and wrapping gifts over the weekend, cards were sent out in time to reach everyone BEFORE Christmas, and I've already gathered the ingredients for Christmas breakfast. I was serious about the tree, though. There's just no room.

One of our favorite holiday traditions since moving to Pennsylvania (gasp!) 4.5 years ago is joining the Hartman/Shilliday family for their annual Cookie Swap. Don't let that cutesie little name fool you. Sure, everyone joins in to decorate and bake a huge batch of roll-out sugar cookies. But in truth, this is an all-out, every-man-for-himself cookie baking competition. The mission: Choose your cookie, then bake a dozen for each of the families competing, along with an extra batch for the competition itself. On competition day, your cookie is entered in three categories: best looking, best "newcomer" OR "back to basics" cookie, and best tasting (grand prize). On average, about 9-10 families partake in the event. That's a heck of a lot of cookies!
(As a side note, don't make the mistake I made one year in choosing to make a sandwich cookie of any kind - I didn't think about the fact that I had doubled my work until I was halfway through baking. The cookies weren't finished until 4 a.m. the morning of competition. Lesson learned!)

I have absolutely no bragging rights when it comes to this competition, as I have yet to win in any of the categories. But when you're competing against people who begin training for the event in January by testing every last one of Martha Stewart's cookie recipes, there's going to be some real contenders. Needless to say, we always come home with some very yummy loot.

This year was Eily's first Cookie Day. While she did nothing to really help (other than sleep long enough to give me time to bake my cookies the night before), I think she still had a good time. She was more excited about playing with pals Liam and Mia than the cookies, though. This ended up being a good thing since Jesse and I ran away with Nic and Andy that evening to go see New Moon . (Please keep all comments to yourself. We are well aware that the Twilight saga is not "high art.") Debbie and Gary were nice enough to babysit the kids for us, and even snapped a few pictures on my camera while we were gone.




Eily: What the heck is this thing??
Liam: I'm not sure, but let me hold your binky while you figure it out.




Liam: Just taking a pit stop between play times.
Gary: When are these kids going to bed? I'm pooped!
Debbie: Aw, the baby fell asleep in my arms.
Eily: Sweet! If I just pretend I'm sleeping, maybe she won't put me down in the pack & play!




Gary: Seriously....when are the kids going to bed?


The rest of our usual Christmas traditions won't happen until this coming weekend, when we go to visit my family in CT. My niece's birthday is the 28th, and we always stick around to celebrate with her. I've already been informed that she is having a princess-themed birthday party. Guess I need to dig out my tiara.

As for new traditions, we're going to make things up as we go along. Christmas Eve will be spent here at the house. We're going to order Chinese food for dinner and maybe sit around watching movies together. After doing presents and breakfast (I'm thinking chocolate chip pancakes...mmmmm!) on Christmas morning, we'll head over to the Nog at Noon celebration hosted by our friend Nathan's aunt, Carol. We attended this event on our very first Christmas in PA, when we were too poor to travel home to see either of our families, and it was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again as we haven't been back since that year. Next week we'll be heading down to Virginia for the annual New Year's at Nic & Andy's place, giving Eily the chance to hang out with her main squeeze, Liam, for a few days.

That's the plan anyway...check back soon for any corrections to the agenda! I'll leave you all with a pic of the Christmas elf staying with us this year: