i see the light at the end of the christmas tunnel

now maybe i can sit back and enjoy the season before its over!!  my poor blog has been so neglected.  any spare moment has been used to bake cookies, wrap gifts, clean up the house, make my mom a 50th birthday dinner, oh, and i have caught a few desperately needed cat naps! 

the decorating has been done for a week or two now...i've just been fluffing here and there.  usually once i have something just how i want it, something falls, moves, or shifts in some way...and basically by this point, i'm over it, and it can stay where it is! lol 

on saturday we celebrated my mom's 50th birthday.  i made her a big turkey dinner, and it was so tastey if i do say so myself!!  i used a brine for the bird...and man, was that meat juicey.  that will definetly be the way i cook a bird from now on!!  the gravy was SLAMMIN'!  everyone really enjoyed it, and that made me so happy.

yesterday i started my baking extravaganza!  the best idea i ever had was to freeze all of my cookie dough!  i made everything about 2 weeks ago, labeled them and threw them in.  i took them out the night before...it was awesome!  the only thing that i still have to make are the linzer tarts, but everything else(peanut butter, sugar, chocolate chip and pecan snow balls) came out terrific!  i will definetly be doing that again!   this year i got the kids involved...i've been waiting for this for years!!  i rolled out the sugar cookies and cut them, and let the kids have at it!  emily needed hand over hand assistance, but david just went to town, shaking away!  i let emily play in some left over dough, i think that was her favorite part!

tomorrow is emily's holiday concert.  each classroom get to pick a christmas song to dance to or make a video for.  i can't wait to see what emily's class does!  i'm going to pack up her teacher and aide gifts tonight so i can bring them with me...this way she won't have to lug them on the bus with her on wednesday.  her aides are getting cookies and a wire star ornament as well as a bottle of suave body wash.  her teacher will receive cookies, a comfy blanket($5 @ walmart--but the most awesome blankets ever, i got one last year as a gift!), suave body wash, a bath poof, and a small bottle of nail polish.  everything will be around $10 for her and $2-$3 ish dollars for her aides.  just a little something to say "thank you and happy holidays".   i had big plans of crafting something, but just ran out of time and energy...who doens't like cookies and some yummy smelling body wash though?!

oh well, i have a couple of things to wrap while the little man naps!!