Cookie Decorating + Underpants Dancing = a Good Day.

And when it's too cold to play outside, you get creative.

 COOKIES!!!

Sugar shock!

Turn your back for a second and she WILL dump every last sprinkle on her cookie.

But it was totally worth it. And Don laughing in the background as Dave removes Riley is tooootally worth it!

  
Visions of sugar plum fairies are danced in his head, one may suppose.

I love these cozy winter evenings spent with loved ones. I love how EVERY gathering this time of year is a party. I love the cards and letters coming in (we are for sure doing cards next year - they are great!) and love starting new traditions with my little family.  I'm so excited for Riley to open her presents - we only got her two things but they are soo Riley - she is going to FLIP OUT. We did not get Joe presents as he's a clueless 5-month-old, and got small presents for each other, since we aren't millionaires yet. It really isn't about the presents, is it?

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on their journeys.

- Charles Dickens, "Christmas Carol"

I love that book - it gets read every year about this time, ever since someone gifted it to me in forth grade. I like it because of Scrooge. He is such a hard-nosed, selfish jerk kind of person, and then a miracle opens his eyes and changes his perspective and he is able to become a kind, grandfatherly friend. So there's always hope. I also like Bob Cratchit, who is happy and patient even though his boss is awful and his circumstances humble. I like that he slides down the ice with some kids on his way home - it takes a confident, free spirit to do that. Reminds me of Dave.