Christmas Eve 2006

Christmas this year was very quiet. We didn't have the money to go visit anyone and would have had nobody to visit anyhow, so we just stayed at home. In a way, it was very difficult for me. I'm used to having lots of family around for the Holidays. However, it gave us a chance to spend more time focusing on just our own little family. On Christmas Eve, we watched the First Presidency Devotional and the church video "Joy to the World" which is a video of different families reading the Christmas story from both the Bible and Book of Mormon while they show pictures of nativity scenes and different parts of Christ's life. Afterwards, we baked sugar cookies with Hyrum. I wasn't able to find a recipe that I liked for sugar cookies since my cookbook and recipes have disappeared. I'm sure they're still packed... somewhere. We ended up buying a tube of pre-made Pillsburry dough. The instructions were to open the tube and cut the roll in half inch slices, but the dough was way too gooey and wouldn't hold any shape. We decided we would try to roll it out and cut it since gingerbread men shapes (the only cookie cutter we have) are more fun than plain circles anyhow. It took a lot of flour to get the dough to a decent consistency. Hyrum really enjoyed rolling the dough and especially loved cutting out the shapes. We turned the oven light on so he could watch the cookies raise and get all puffy. He liked decorating the baked cookies too, but once he realized that the decorations were just candy, he ate more than he decorated. The cookies weren't all that great. I would have preferred homemade to the Pillsburry, but Hyrum seemed to like them. We spent the next several days hiding them from him so he wouldn't spoil his appetite for real food.

I'll post about our Christmas as soon as I get the pictures off of my camera.