Christmas Cookies: Like Mother, Like Daughter

I've never been one for messes. My house isn't always perfectly clean, but I have a really tough time with clutter and messes. I've also never really been one for baking. I LOVE baked items, but I haven't traditionally enjoyed the time and effort required to bake things. Because of these two things, I have always passed Christmas cookie making onto someone else. It was a tradition in our family that I loved as a kid, so I really wanted it to be a tradition in our home too; however, I didn't want to be the adult in charge.

A few years back Lee was wonderful and helped the girls make cookies. (I helped a little, I just wasn't in charge so that I didn't feel too stressed by the mess.) Then last year, my parents were visiting our house for Christmas and things went down the way they always have -- my Mom made the dough and baked the cookies, while my Dad helped Morgan and Brynne roll out the dough and cut shapes.

My Dad has amazing patience for letting kids put the cookie cutters wherever they want-even if it's in the middle of the dough. My Dad also loves to hand out samples of the dough, probably because he delights in the joy on kids' faces when he gives them some (especially if Mommy just barely told them they couldn't have any). I remember making cookies a lot with my Dad when we were younger (usually sugar cookies or chocolate chip). We children would look at him and chirp like a baby bird, and then he would break off a piece of dough to feed us.

I remember now that when I started this post, I really wanted to tell you how Morgan is definitely my child. When we made cookies as a kid, I usually only decorated five or six of the more than 100 we made as a family. This was because I was very meticulous in my decorating. For example, the Christmas tree was green with a yellow star, a brown trunk (brown sprinkles), white tinsel, and many different colors of ornaments. I somehow managed to make every cookie a work of art, which I find quite fascinating because creativity is generally not my thing.

Anyway, this year we made about 50 tiny cookies. The girls and I set to work to frost them all. Everything was going great until Morgan decided to take time to give her gingerbread man a face, hair, and buttons. Next thing I knew, she had made a star with four different colors and a Christmas tree complete with stripes. As I started frosting double-time to make up for how much time she was taking, I began to understand what my parents felt like watching me frost cookies. Like mother, like daughter!