One step ahead

"Fast as fast can be, you'll never catch me! I'm the Ginger Bread Man!". . .

Don't judge me. I know that Thanksgiving hasn't even come and gone yet and here we are decorating Christmas cookies. But how else are you supposed to keep 3 children, 2 teenagers, myself, and a Grammy busy all day long on a snowy Saturday?  Normally, I adhere to the 'no Christmas until the sun has set and come up again the day after the Thanksgiving holiday' rule. If it makes you all feel better, we didn't even play Christmas music while we were decorating or baking. (We did sing some in the car though).  But we had a whole day with all of these extra helping hands, so it seemed like a perfect solution.
We did have a lot of fun. We even laughed a lot. We even cleaned up after ourselves. (With help from the cleaning fairy). We then all took a nap. (except for the cleaning fairy), (and the children).

Here Alexa and I are in our festive aprons, because let's face it,
I'm a messy cook.
And so is she.

Here is the crew after decorating most of the gingerbread cookies. My mom played a key role on the clean-up crew (she's also known as the cleaning fairy). Thanks to her I didn't have to wash any dishes. S-Weet! She's real good about that. However, she's not real good about having her picture taken most of the time. So you'll just have to pretend she's hiding somewhere behind these guys.
We made 4 different types of cookies in all. Ginger Bread, Mexican Wedding cake (or according to Megan, Don's cookies, but only her family calls them that), Jelly Butter Balls, and Almond Spritz. Yummy!! The amazing thing, is that we actually have some left over! So my mom will take some home and I already have a tray in the freezer for when it does get closer to Christmas.
Wow, so this is what it feels like to actually be ahead of the game instead of two steps behind, scrambling at the last minute to catch up.
Amazing.
I may have to try it more often. :)

Anyhow, enjoy your Thanksgiving.
Remember to thank God for all of your blessings.
You've just seen a few of mine.