Thanksgiving and Cookies

We spent the weekend at Grandma Trudi and Grandpa Scott's house.  We left early Thursday morning and did not get home until Sunday late afternoon.  It was a long time to be gone.  Four days of no naps for Buddy and not sleeping in our own beds was difficult.  There were more and more meltdowns as the days went on.  It was a fun weekend nonetheless!

Of course, I didn't take ANY photos of anything Thanksgiving related.  Blog fail.  We were at a potluck, family reunion-type get together for Thanksgiving.  On Friday, Grandma and I did a little shopping in the morning.  That afternoon, we started our annual Christmas cookie baking.  We typically make a couple of batches of spritz cookies along with peanut blossoms, ginger ball cookies, rolo pretzels and almond-bark pretzels.  This year we added two recipes passed down by Daddy's Great Grandma Irene.  The first was sour cream cookies that were rolled out and cut out with cookie cutters.  It took Daddy and Uncle Sean a couple dozen cookies to figure out the correct thickness and crispiness that they remembered from when they were kids.  I think they finally got it, but it may take another year to perfect it.  Hilary and I had fun decorating all the cookies, but Derek and his siblings reminded us that Great Grandma Irene only dusted them with sugar.  The second recipe was rosettes which were a fried cookie type of thing.  They tasted good but didn't turn out quite right.  This recipe will probably take a few years to perfect.  But we are so thankful that we were able to continue the tradition of baking Christmas cookies, especially now that we have some of the recipes Derek remembers as a kid.

Rolling Peanut Blossoms in sugar

Don't touch!

Spritz Cookies

Rolo Pretzels- my favorite!

Great-Great-Grandma Irene's Rosettes

We all headed to Daddy's favorite restaurant, Budger's, for supper on Friday night.  Punky and Buddy weren't so sure about going beforehand, but as we were leaving Buddy said "Bugzers iz yummy."  I think if we lived closer, Budger's would be our new Chipotle.

We played cards every night after the kids went to sleep.  We stayed up until midnight or later.  So.much.fun!  And on Saturday, Daddy and I got to sneak away for a movie.   It was a great weekend!