Lights, Cookies, Action!

When my Christmas break begins, I feel the need to cram as many Christmas oriented activities into my time off.  The past few years we've been able to take all of the kids to this crazy house in San Marcos that has a million lights.  We took them again this year, but we missed Santa and they were all kind of tired.

 

Kate and Owen already were dressed in their jammies and ready for bed.  Bailey was in her warm up suit and ready for a jog :)

Kate and Bailey always ready for a pose.

Bailey got used to having her cousins down almost every weekend since Thanksgiving.  We watched Kate and Owen a couple of weekends while Kyle and Sam went to scope out some other practices.  This morning she even asked me if Kate and Owen were at Grammy's house.  So when all the kids are together, what a better activity than to make some cookies.  My mom was brave enough to have them make cookies that can actually get messy...and messy they did get.

Here's the three of them--Owen, Kate, and Bailey--clean, cute, and looking innocent enough.

It wasn't until later in the day when their true colors came out.  All three of them were pretty messy, but I think Bailey enjoyed it the most.

On Christmas Eve, I got the kids these gingerbread kits to decorate.  This style of cookie making seemed a little more manageable for me.  Here are the three little bakers ready to decorate their gigantic cookies.

Owen got started right away and spared no time.  He knew when they were done, they could eat their handiwork.

Cute Kate was very meticulous and took the longest in her decorating.  You'll see at the end that her cookie was the most decorated one.

Here's my sweet, sugar obessesed Bailey.  She started out needing some help, but then jumped right in.  She also quickly learned that her decorations were deliciously edible.

Look at her extreme concentration, but how quickly it changes...

 

You really have to look closely at this picture to see the hilarious placement of her M&Ms.  This was with no help.  At this point Bailey was putting one on her cookie and asking to eat the next one.  After several of them, she just turned to me and asked if she could eat them all!  Her sole purpose in life is to seek out and consume sugar.

Kate and Sam are such the twins :)

  

Look at how detailed Kate's turned out.



We made them wait a while to actually eat their beautiful cookies.  I told them they could each eat one part of their cookie and they are all very smart; they chose the largest part--the head.  They had a cookie picnic by the Christmas tree.  Here they are posing with their gingerbread man cookie heads.

Kate and Owen both had a few bites and realized they weren't too delicious.

Bailey on the other hand, ate almost her entire thing.

I think it was a very succesful and not very messy, activity for the three of them.  I bought the kits at Trader Joes for .99 cents!  It filled almost the entire afternoon on Christmas Eve, so it was a hit!