Christmas Baking on December 7th

Elisabeth, Christopher, Carlee and Kayden patiently waiting to begin.



Kayden cutting the dough.



The "clean" Elisabeth before the decorating really begins!



Kayden, Christopher and Elisabeth ready in their pj's to go see the lights



This year Tammy and I decided we wanted to do something fun with the kids to celebrate the holidays. Tammy was so awesome and took some time the day before and make sugar cookies from scratch. The next night, on December 7th, Elisabeth and I went to Ben and Tammy's to cut the cookies into shapes and then cook and bake them. The activity was such a hit with the kids! Christopher seemed to have a better grasp at how to decorate the cookies with the sprinkles. Kayden and Elisabeth just loved to dump all of the sprinkles onto one cookie so that it was more of a creation of the saying, "Would you like a cookie with your sprinkles?". They made such a mess and had such a great time doing it. I remember baking and decorating cookies and candies as a child with mom and those are some of my favorite memories that I have of her. It was fun to be able to start doing some of those things with Elisabeth this year.





After we baked somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-7 dozen cookies, we had the kids get into their pj's and we all piled into the suburban to go see the Christmas lights at the Canyon View park in Spanish Fork. Elisabeth, Kayden, and Carlee were especially enthralled with the lights and they loved seeing the Lockness Monster and the frogs jumping. We then drove to Salem to see the lights at "Pond Town", which the kids also enjoyed.





I love this time of the year! It is nice to have good friends to be able to do things with and to share in the spirit of the Christmas season.

Elisabeth's Christmas 2007 Picture

Ok - I know as a mom that I am my child's biggest fan. I also love having professional pictures taken of her because I feel like that since I have to work full time that I sometimes miss the subtle changes in her and professional photographers seem to (for the most part) catch her in a better setting than I do with my own camera. I wish that I had a digital SLR (I think that's the right initials) camera where I could change the f-stop setting to better catch the movements of a busy toddler. Hopefully my dear husband will read this post someday and will figure out what I would like for Christmas next year! I also want to take a photography class to really learn the proper way to take a picture. So until then, I will rely on my no-sitting fee coupons from JCPenny where the package is $7.99.

Although as a side note here - I have a love/hate relationship with JCPenny. I like that I usually get pretty good pictures from them at a good price, but I really hate that the people who work there have no idea how to work with kids. I'm lucky that Elisabeth is fairly photogenic and at an age where I can start to bribe her with a treat of some sort to get her to smile. I really disliked that at this last photo shoot where this picture was taken, that although I had the first appointment of the day (at 8:00 a.m.) on December 1st (the Saturday where it DUMPED snow in the morning), that the photographer was getting angry with Elisabeth and telling her that she was in a big hurry to get done. She was incredibly impatient with my child. What really bothered me was that she was talking to Elisabeth like she was a 4 or 5 year old who might actually understand her, instead of being 2, and also that there was no other people in the studio when we went in for the shoot. Calli - have you ever had this problem at JCPenny? It was really frustrating for me. I wish that I could afford to go to Kiddie Kandids more and have people take Elisabeth's picture that actually try to take the time to make my child at ease with them and so the pictures turn out better. I'm glad that Kiddie Kandids has their birthday portrait club where I can get the freebie picture on her birthday!

Anyway, with all of that being said, and in my own very biased opinion, I think that Elisabeth is absolutely beautiful in this picture with her long, natural curls and deep brown eyes. Jake & I will have our hands full with her when she turns 16.