Christmas Cookie Decorating 2014

This has been quite a week of festivities!!  I hosted a party for a mom's group I run on Tuesday night, Tav's birthday party on Wednesday evening, last night was our small group Christmas celebration here and then tonight we had our friends over for some Christmas cookie decorating.  This Christmas cookie decorating has become a tradition between our two families and we all really enjoy it.  To prepare, the little guys and I had fun rolling out the dough and cutting out the shapes this morning.  It was Penn's first time participating.  He did a great job and was adorable (as usual) in the process.

Tav was a regular pro.  

 I saved some dough for Koen to do a few cookie cut-outs when he got home from school.  

Doug got home just before Grant, Deborah and their three kids arrived at 4pm and we all jumped right into cookie decorating!  Penn got to frost his first cookie too.  He was very serious and very proud.

It was fun to get to help Penn Rye a little bit.  He was just taking it all in.  But was also very proud of his project.

Koen and Miles finished decorating after about 20 minutes.  They love getting to play together, so they were off and upstairs hanging out pretty quickly.  Claire and Tav stuck around a little longer, but then they joined the big kids upstairs.  Penn and Hazel eventually went to play in the living room.  We heard some shrieking and went to check on them.  Yep, just being silly spinning around on the hardwood.  So funny!

A little while later, we found them playing "Night-Night/All Done" on the couch.  So cute.  They'd lay their heads down and say goodnight to each other and then they would shoot their heads up and say, "All Done!" and laugh hysterically.  So cute that they are really starting to become friends and finding things to play together.

What were we adults doing while the kids were happily enjoying each other's company?  Finishing decorating the cookies of course (and loving it!).

Eventually we needed to split the middle kids from the oldest upstairs (mostly because of some issues between K & T).  Deborah had brought along some fun sticker crafts, so Grant helped the kids with those while Doug got on dinner prep and Deborah and I worked on cleaning up the cookie project.  Penn made a sticker snowman ("Olaf" of course) and he was so proud.

Grant did a great job with the craft and the kids.  Claire and Tavin did it for quite awhile with his help.

After the kitchen was cleaned up, we set up for dinner and all shared a lovely, simple, but delicious meal together.  Tavin prayed for the meal and it was precious, thanking the Lord for his friends being there.  I love how kids just say it like it is.  This evening was one of my favorite moments this week and it's been quite a week.  I'm just so thankful to share life and this season of life as parents with young kids with other like-minded people.  It's refreshing and encouraging.  After dinner, the kids all get to sample cookies as we cleaned up and then just like that it was bedtime!  But before our friends left, Doug had the brilliant idea to get a picture of all the kids together.  And it turned out great!  Look at all these good friends!

I had to share a closeup of these happy smiles!

And then we let the kids do a silly picture of course.

So, as you can see, super fun and special night with dear friends.  Thanks Grant, Deborah, Miles, Claire and Hazel for continuing our cookie-decorating tradition.  Merry Christmas!