This week was my annual cookie week which along with everyday life includes the typical preparations of planning and grocery shopping, a fun-filled day of baking and visiting with my mom and then some fun weekend activities with the rest of the Klingenmaier Family, including a family picture with Santa...
The boys enjoying a pizza dinner with Daddy while I worked later on Monday night...and Avery even had his pizza shirt on! :)
Emma isn't a fan of being locked up in the Kitchen...especially when it is cold outside and therefore chilly in that room. During the summer Eric added an extension to our "gate" to keep her penned in. She apparently decided that she could still outsmart us by tearing it apart and jumping over. We found her upstairs on Tuesday night (and again on Thursday night) when we got home.
Video: "Four in Spanish"
Also on Tuesday night, Eric and Avery read his new favorite book: T
he Great and Mighty Nikko. It is an English/Spanish counting book about a child's toy wrestlers that we got from the Library. Avery loves it and is slowly learning to count to 10 in Spanish from it...
On Wednesday night we came home to find a Christmas package for the boys from Eric's aunt and uncle...their very first hockey equipment! :)
That night after the boys went to sleep I pulled up my cookie spreadsheet to prepare my cookie grocery list.
On Thursday, my parents came down for the weekend and that evening Eric and I headed out to get all of my baking supplies (a little last minute). They were out of the Meijer butter (which was on sale as 2 for $6 and only had Land of Lakes butter which was $6 on its own!! I realized we would have to find butter elsewhere but Eric set out to find more butter instead. What he found was a Meijer employee named Jeff that price matched 8 pounds of the Land of Lakes butter for us to match the Meijer brand sale!!! Needless to say Jeff recently got his very own plate of Christmas cookies! :)
After fulfilling our butter needs I got most of the rest of the items on my list, but I couldn't find the chocolate blocks I was looking for and the Ghirardelli melting wafers were pricier than I'd hoped. Once again my man set into action and we found that they were about 75% of the price at Sam's Club so after we paid for our Meijer groceries we headed there. Unfortunately, we arrived at Sam's right after closing time, but fortunately Eric was able to sneak in to quickly look for my chocolate and some paper towels. He was able to get in and find the towels but unfortunately the chocolate was sold out and so we headed to Walmart. There we still didn't find exactly what I was looking for. They did have the white chocolate wafers and two bags of the dark, but since that was not enough and I still needed the milk chocolate, we bought what we could of the wafers and then also bought 8 large dark and milk chocolate Hershey bars...not quite what I had in mind but it would do the trick.
Finally it was Friday...Cooking Making Day!! Eric took the boys to school and daycare and then my mom and I got to work...right after I gave her our matching Christmas baking aprons...
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| "Mommy! It is as big as my head!!" |
Mom and I worked hard all day and were amazed by the machine that we were! Everything went surprisingly smoothly and by the time the boys were ready to come home we were done with all but a few cookies and the kitchen was still mostly clean. It was a Christmas miracle! ;P
While we worked hard, the boys played hard at Christina's (after Asher was done with school for the day). Then, at the end of the day, Eric picked them up and brought them home to lend us a hand.
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| Asher car tower. |
After a thorough washing we put Asher to work unwrapping all of the Rolos and Avery set out laying out the pretzels.
When the Rolo treats were done, and we were filled up with Taco Bell, we set out on our last cookie to make: The Classic Spritz. I made the dough and formed the cookies on the pan and then our little elves got to work decorating for us to finish out Cookie Day.
When Cookie Day was over and my mom and I were thoroughly exhausted we gladly headed to bed to rest up for the remainder of the weekend. That night while we slept, we got a dusting of snow on the ground so on Saturday morning the boys excitedly dressed in their winter gear and headed outside while I worked to get all of the cookies we'd made plated and ready for delivery.
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| Asher 'snowblowing' the driveway |
Once all of the cookies were plated we piled them all into the fridge and then got ready to go to Gurnee to meet up with the rest of the Klingenmaier clan and visit Santa.
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| Asher drew this picture for Santa and I to share. He said that Santa got to keep the picture but that I could take a picture of it for my phone. |
Once in Gurnee we got our ticket/time for Santa (2pm) and then headed to Portillo's to have lunch with the remaining 2/3'rds of Klingenmaiers.
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| 6 (crazy) Klingenmaier boys sitting together. |
When our lunch was over we went back to Bass Pro Shop to explore the fun of the store as we waited for our time to get a picture with Santa.
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| Our 1/2 Dozen <3 |
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| My dad attempted to teach Avery how to shoot a gun. The looks on Avery's face as he tries to understand and do what my dad is telling him are priceless. |
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| There's a smile! |
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| Watching the waterwheel and the fish in the pond. |
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| Avery's nonchalant posture here cracks me up! |
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| Eric playing hide-and-go seek with the Asher and Caleb in the ice-fishing tent area. |
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| Avery & Micah marching with the nutcracker/soldier |
Finally, it was 2:00 and it was time for us to visit Santa! Aaron and Erika's family went first. Then we joined them for our family picture and then we took a picture of just our family. Asher gave Santa the picture he drew and then he and Avery also took the opportunity to tell Santa that they both want Rescue Bots (Avery wants Chase and Asher wants Heatwave)...which was different than Asher saying he wanted a 'mote retrol sock'! :)
When the pictures were done we spent a little more time playing in Bass Pro and then set out to find the boys the treat we'd promised them so we could celebrate Gabe's 2nd birthday the next day. At first we walked through the mall to find a McDonalds and get sundaes only to find that there was no longer one. We then looked at the ice cream shop that they had but deemed it too pricey, so we decided to just leave the mall and go to another McDonalds. As we walked back to Bass Pro though I remembered that I had a plate of cookies I was planning to give to Aaron and Erika so I offered those as a treat instead so that we didn't have to load the kids up and go somewhere else. Everyone liked the idea and even the kids were okay with it....and THAT is how we wound up having an impromptu birthday party in the lobby of Bass Pro Shop...next to the fireplace! ;)
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| Asher, Hudson & Avery checking out the flavors at the ice cream shop. |
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| Grandma and Papa with their boys |
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| The boys checking out the goodies. |
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| Gabe opening his birthday present from Grandma and Papa. |
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| Asher and Avery passed out on the way home. |
When all of the festivities were seemingly over the boys were not ready to stop playing with their cousins so Aaron and Erika's family headed up to our house to visit longer. The kids had a fun time playing together, watching Rudolph and eating pizza while the adults just hung out...mostly...Erika and I actually slipped out to enjoy a quick kid/husband free shopping trip to Kohls!
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| Five little monkeys watching a movie on the bed. |
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| Story time. |
Video: Wrestling Bedtime Hugs & Kisses
On Sunday we finished out Cookie Week the best way that we knew how...delivering the goodies to our neighbors! We made our way up and down the street passing out goodies to as many as possible and stopping in to visit a few of them...including our favorite neighbor Marge!
