Christmas Eve

Christmas is a little different when you live 3,000 miles away from family. Since Joe and I are from the same city, and we both grew up there, we have a lot of family and good friends in one area. I am used to running around from place to place each holiday to see and celebrate with all of our loved ones. It is so fun to see everyone, but it can be exhausting too. I think last year Madeline and I hit 5 places on Christmas Day alone.

This year one thing I was looking forward to was being able to relax and have a slow-paced holiday. We had been invited to a friend's house for dinner on Christmas Day, and that was really all the planning we had done.

When Christmas Eve rolled around, the gifts were mostly wrapped and we were able to spend a fun day together doing whatever we wanted. In the past, my sister-in-law and I have gotten together in December to make elaborate Christmas cookie platters for our friends and family. We had so much fun doing this. We would spend weeks looking through magazines and cookbooks to find delicious recipes, until we settled on about 10-12 that we loved. It took a couple of days to bake double batches of each recipe, but it was a great time together and everyone really enjoyed the results! I missed that this year, and found I didn't have time to do a lot of baking, or my sister-in-law to keep me company, so it just slipped through the cracks.

Christmas Eve I decided to go ahead and make a few cookies just for my neighbors. Everyone loves Peanut Butter Blossoms, so I was going to make those, but then I saw the holiday Peppermint Kisses, so I made chocolate cookies and put those on top instead. They were delish!

Here is a recipe for Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies I found at allrecipes.com (one of my favorite sites)

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In large bowl, beat butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt; stir into the butter mixture until well blended. Mix in the chocolate chips and walnuts. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or just until set. Cool slightly on the cookie sheets before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

If you want to add the kisses, just put them on right after they come out of the oven, before transferring to the wire racks.

In the evening we headed over to the Bush's for dinner. There were quite a few people there, so it was great company and good food too. We forgot to take pictures until near the end, so I only got pictures of the Bush family and our friend Christine with her 2 boys, since everyone else had left. We planned to go caroling, but the weather was horrible - really rainy and windy, so we opted to drive around and look at Christmas lights. I noticed there are not nearly as many people here who put up Christmas lights as there are in Washington. I'm not sure if that has to do with all the snow and cold, or the fact that energy costs are about 4 times as high, but it was a little disappointing. Our neighbors have a great tree in their front yard that they put lights on, and it is so gorgeous with the lights and the snow. It is the quintessential outdoor Christmas tree. I love looking at it whenever we are coming and going.

I think Joe likes dogs and children more than adults sometimes. It's what makes him such a great dad.

Madeline really does like Chris a lot, even if this picture doesn't exactly capture that...

Ann read us all some nice Christmas stories.Here is what was left of the group by the time I pulled out my camera. Be sure to click on it to enlarge it, so you can see Emily's "funny face" that her mom encouraged her to make. She is the one sitting next to Madeline.