Christmas Cookie Exchange 2012

Every year since Daniel and I have been married we have done a family cookie exchange and decorating party. We skipped two years while we were staying with my mom, but this year I made darn sure I scheduled it well in advance with our family. Not everyone could come but this was the first year that we had it as parents. It was an amazing feeling to sit back and watch my baby girls decorate their cookies.

Addison had a ball with the sprinkles and Cadence was more interested in licking the icing off of the cookies as we were applying it so she never really got to the sprinkle part of the decorating. She's such a precious child. She's a licker. I make her a bagel with cream cheese...she eats the cream cheese and leaves the bagel...I give her french fries with some ketchup and she just licks the ketchup off of the fry...you give her a piece of buttered bread and she just licks the butter off, you get the drift...lol.

 They have both been really excited this holiday season. They are so fascinated with the Christmas trees and all of the pretty decorations and we keep telling them that Santa will be coming soon and leaving lots of presents under the tree. We've been watching lots of Christmas movies and I've explained to them that we will need to leave cookies and milk out for him to come and bring their gifts. We've attempted Santa once already and they wouldn't go near him so we'll try once more this coming Saturday and hope for the best. I started the tradition of having a family picture taken with Santa every year and I'll be sad if we miss out on a year.

Our Christmas tree this year!

This year we also started a tradition of piling into the Yukon and getting some food and heading out to see all of the Christmas lights in our area. I kind of had to push the excitement on them by getting a little overly excited whenever we would see the lights, but eventually they got the drift and would squeal with laughter and exclaim, "pretty, pretty" or "it's beautiful" whenever we would come up on some. The excitement of waking up on Christmas morning to a tree loaded with lots of presents for myself has turned into sheer excitement to get up on Christmas morning to see the looks on my precious girls faces when they see the presents for them. It's amazing what becoming a parent does to one. These are truly some of the best years of my entire life and I am so thankful for them.