Christmas Cookies

When I was a kid, I remember baking Christmas cookies as a family every year.  My mom would roll out sugar cookie dough, Brian and I would choose the perfect cookie cutter shapes, and Dad, Brian, and I would decorate them.  I am not a big sugar cookie fan, but I always thought our sugar cookies with the crazy, messy icing and tons of sprinkles were the best.

Wanting to carry forward the tradition of crazy, messy icing and tons of sprinkles, I baked sugar cookies one afternoon so that we could all decorate them.

We had a pretty good assembly line.  Frank and I used the tubes of icing and then gave the cookies to Jacob who had a little bowl of sprinkles.  I made up my mind in advance that if the sprinkles got all over the floor, they got all over the floor, and I wouldn't freak out.

Carter stayed on my lap and in the middle of the action.  Actually, I think I had some icing on my fingers because he was attacking them the whole time.

To my surprise, Jacob did a good job keeping the sprinkles on the cookies.  This is the first year that he seemed to "get" what we were doing.

That's not to say there wasn't some sprinkle-eating going on...

aaaaannd we're done.

Look at his fingers!  It took a full day and lots of scrubbing for the color to wear off his fingers!

Overall, though, cookie decorating went much smoother than in years past.  It makes me excited for the next several years as the kids get old enough to really enjoy and participate in our Christmas traditions.