It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Oh, Johnny.  How I have lived to treasure your voice of molasses sprinkled with cheese.  Your "Merry Christmas" CD has its very own special place not only in my heart, but also atop all of the other ornaments in their box to ensure that I have the proper music to kick Christmas off with.  My heart swells each time I see you at last in your special Christmas ski pants with your special Christmas skiis.  And the backdrop of frozen tundra that is only excusable because of the music the case contains inside of it because, come on Johnny, did you really expect us to believe you were actually skiing when this album cover was shot? 

 Now you, too can experience Christmas Spirit in it's truest form: By drowning in the sugar sweet crooning of Mr. Johnny Mathis.  Did you press play yet?  Okay, good.  Next up on the checklist to make Christmas feel like Christmas is snow:

Ample enough to muffle the sound of hoofs on the roof?  I'd say so.

As it turns out my little eskimo girl is a snow eater.

As long as it's not yellow...

Eskimos must shop for supplies in case they get snowed into their igloo!  If you thought that Ali is not cool enough to wear sunglasses indoors, you'd be wrong.  (Although you can't see in this photo, she also insists on wearing this particular pair of shades upside down.)

What else to liven up the Christmas spirit?  Well, sugar makes anything liven up!...

...And flour

Eggs too!

Add some baking soda, TLC and then mix.

Meanwhile, prepare the cookie cutters.  (Random factoid, did you know that we've only used the spelling "cookie" for a few short years?  My old 1950's Betty Crocker cookbook spells them like "cooky".)

Ali seemed to think that the cookie cutters should be displayed on the tree first...

...All on one branch nestled between Santa Bear and Clarice.

Back to business, dough girl!

We then proceeded to bake and cool and frost.  And to be honest, when you have a two year old and a generally tired mama and daddy frosting cookies all together, they didn't turn out as photogenic as I might have liked.  Just mark my words that they were pretty (to us) and that they tasted even prettier.  Next order of business:  To crime-stop a certain sneaky (and suddenly tall) toddler from sneaking them off of the countertop.  She still has a lot of work to do on her thievery skills, however, as the green frosting all around her mouth and hands is usually a dead giveaway.

And speaking of green, in true Christmas [un]spirit, Alessandra hasn't been a stranger to invoking a little Grinch once in awhile.  When she is feeling particularly testy, she does at least do us the favor of warning us: "Ali...Angry."  Remind you of anyone else on the green team?

And worse, she next does this extremely terrifying thing where she furrows her brows and wrinkles her lips together in a tight "o" shape that makes an incredible snarl.  Then she thrusts her pointer finger at you and tells you what's on her mind.  It's very scary.  And since we're making comparisons here, it's really not unlike the evil monkey on Family Guy.

I happened to catch Ali giving poor little Keegan a piece of her mind (this example is sans accusatory finger, but you get the idea.  Scary!)

This is not what I had in mind when I said I wanted to raise our child to be more green.

Aside from the occasional mean mug, there are plenty of pleasantries to redeem Alessandra back to angeldom.  She is constantly leading me around by my arm as she incorporates me like a big, gimpy doll into dancing and reading and playing.  Hugs, kisses and laughter are a common occurance in our household and I have to tell you, those are three roommates of ours that will never get kicked out.

Love and laughter are two of the main ingredients in our family recipe.

Forever the procrastinator, I still have a pretty hefty chunk of Christmas shopping to get done in two short weeks.  When or where I'll have the time to do that is beyond me, but let me tell you, the world wide web is my best friend this year.  I wonder what the odds are that Santa's elves could build me some spare time in their workshop?  I'm not entirely sure, but tonight we are going to find out!  We are headed to visit Santa's workshop downtown, so that Alessandra can see all of the hard work that the elves put into all of her toys, plus, we need to make a very important pit stop to let Santa know that we'll be in Saginaw for two weeks, so to please drop off a good chunk of her gifts there instead of to our house in Minneapolis when he's doing his Midwest route this year.  Hopefully Santa doesn't have a problem with putting sometimes green people on his "Nice" list.

I hope this finds you on the Nice list as well, and very ungreen.

Muchas smoochas!
RAD