Christmas cookies

Sometime in September, I signed a volunteer form at Parker's school saying I'd be willing to provide baked good for various school events, and this week they held me to it. Her school has Spaghetti With Santa every Christmas, which is a fundraiser spaghetti dinner (and dessert) and Santa is available to have your picture taken with. Excuse my bad sentence structure.

Since Parker LOVES to cut things out with cookie cutters, I decided to try making decorated sugar cookies. I've assisted with this before, but never done them on my own. I told a mom I know with a 2nd grader what I was doing and she laughed and shook her head and said "newbie!". I guess by the time they get to 2nd grade, everyone just does slice and bake.

Here's Parker, doing one of her favorite parts. It's difficult to slow her down enough to fit all the cuts close together, and to not mangle the cookies after they're cut with her hot little hands. I felt like I spent a lot of time saying "wait! don't touch! Wait! "

I decorated all but a few of them, and let her give it a try. She did pretty well with piping on the icing.

Adding sprinkes, the best part.

I did snowflakes, angels and snowmen, and Parker did some hearts and leaves. I just did crazy designs on top of them since that was the most fun, plus I figured if I made them look sort of strange, no one will ask me to make them for their baby shower. I also added white sanding sugar on top of that for sparkle and crunch. I thought they turned out really well!

Garden update

For the first time ever, I planted a fall garden. The Texas Gardner magazine raved about how it was so easy and the best time for gardening in Texas. I planted some late zucchini and grew several before the frost got it, and I've recently harvested my first broccoli! I am still really shocked that I was able to grow broccoli, but it's been no trouble at all. It looks just like the kind you get from the store:

Dog Can Hop - Parker Reads!

Monday evening, Parker read her first book on her own. Her teacher sends home little 6 page booklets with them, along with a popsicle stick that has plastic eyeballs glued onto it so we can point out the words or just have it follow along while we read. Usually we just read these together and we'll have her sound out a word here or there, or just talk about beginning or ending sounds. During dinner the book was on the table, and she got it and slowly sounded out the title. She was so proud of herself! And we were very proud too. She made it about 4 pages in sounding out the words until she got frustrated, but I'm counting it as reading the whole book on her own.

Christmas is coming

More busy time around here. I just don't know where my time goes these days. Our schedule has changed somehow, and the timeslot I used to use for blogging has been taking up with something else I guess. I'm not sure what. It might be that ever since we 'fell back' from Daylight Savings Time, Parker's sleep schedule has been out of sorts. Some days she sleeps until 7:30, some days it's 6:30. This morning it was 6am.
We are counting the days until Christmas. Literally....Parker has 3 Advent-type calendars that she's using to count down. She goes to see Santa on Friday to officially lock in her gift requests. Last friday was her Christmas program at school. It's impossible to get good pictures or video in the sanctuary, but I do have a picture of her in her outfit.

Her face was clean for the performance, but it has candy cane all over it in the photo. She really enjoyed singing with her classmates up on stage - they did 5 songs and acted out the story of Jesus's birth. Her job was ringing bells at the very end, and she did great.

We have most of our decorations up, and Bob did his usual 'green tree' out front.