Christmas Notes

Christmas-time in New York City.

Is it really mid-January already?  Hard to believe!  The year is already zipping along!

The Holidays are always a hectic time for our family, but they were even more so this year.  Besides the yearly parade of birthdays (most of our immediate family birthdays fall Thanksgiving week to mid-January), it also happened to be a milestone birthday for me, so my family decided to celebrate it with me in New York City this year.

There's no place like NYC at Christmas-time, and we hadn't been back there during the Holiday Season in decades!  So, I decided I wanted to celebrate my 50th where it all began, in the city of my birth.

Cousins and friends flew, drove or took the train in to meet us there, and it was an absolutely fabulous time! I am so blessed to have such generous and thoughtful people in my life.  It was a fantastic trip full of sightseeing, visiting the old neighborhood, reconnecting with family and friends, enjoying all of the city's Holiday festivities, taking in a couple of shows and just having great deal of fun!  I miss the City already!

Once we were back home in Colorado, Christmas was upon us!  I didn't think we would have enough time to do our annual Christmas cookie baking extravaganza, but I should have known better.  Ana and her daughter, Natalie, were not about to go without our homemade Christmas cookie tradition this year.  So we each pulled out the cookie sheets and started baking!  All hands were on deck to help with the baking, icing and decorating, and before we knew it, we had a respectable amount of Christmas cookies before us.  Not tons like we usually do, but several dozens for gifting, cookie trays, and of course, for Santa! 

A plate of homemade Christmas cookies,
including the traditional Christmas giraffe!

Which just goes to show that no matter how busy we are, there's almost always time to bake!  Tried-and-true recipes for our favorite cookies, a quick pie, or easy scrumptious muffins bring the "homey-ness" into our homes and into our Holidays, without a huge amount of time or effort.  Engage extra hands to help, and you'll make short work of it.  Nothing makes the Holidays warm, cozy and memorable for us and our families like a special Holiday treat baking in the oven.

I admit that I would have been heartbroken without a plate full of decorated sugar cookies on my table this Christmas.  It was a wonderful Holiday Season full of friends, family, celebrations and cookies ... sometimes, you can have it all!

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