That's the way the cookie crumbles...

Ugh! why does the Christmas season always have to get stressful? No matter what, there is so much to do that at some point I catch myself getting "scroogey." I really do NOT want it to be this way! Today I plan on doing some last minute power shopping to wrap a few odds and ends. I pray that I can then be done and can check purchasing gifts off of my mental list of things to do.

Besides checking things off my list, one way I fight the "scroogies" is to put in my "Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas" video and sing along with all of the songs. Of course, to do this I have entire the groans and rolling of the eyes from my children, but it is definitely worth it!

Tomorrow should prove to be fun. A couple of my oldest and dearest friends and their wonderful children are coming over to bake Christmas cookies. We had originally planned to do this last week, but the night before the big day, 2 of my kids came down with a stomach flu and I had to cancel. Our entire household ended up getting sick. :( Hopefully, we are done with sickness for a while now! My friends and I always have difficulty finding a day that works for everyone, so I was so happy that we were able to reschedule for this week. This works even better because all the kids can come because they are now on Christmas break.

Last week, I made up a couple of batches of master dough from my "One Dough, Fifty Cookies" cookbook (which by itself is a wonderful butter cookie!) which is enough to make 4 different types of cookies. Since I needed to take cookies to a party, I used one batch to make coconut macaroons and chocolate toffee cookies. Anna helped with the former and from the photo above, you can see that Abi helped with the latter. (Somebody has GOT to taste the dough to make sure they will taste OK!)

One last note, I have been sitting here listening to some lovely Christmas music from this site: Pandora You tell the site the name of a song or a musical artist you like and it will create a "station" that plays similar songs. I typed in "What Child is This?" and it came up with several versions to choose from. I chose the Zoe Girl version and ended up with some great new Christian Christmas music. A very fun way to battle the scroogies!