Pre-Christmas Fun

One Christmas tradition my family had for many years was lots and lots of holiday baking followed by creating numerous plates of treats to deliver to neighbors and friends. For many of those years, my mom would also make us go caroling when we delivered them, much to our dismay. This year, my sister Megan and I got together and spent nearly an entire Saturday having a "bakefest" for the same purpose (minus the caroling though). It was a busy day, and no pictures were taken during the process due to the fact that we started in the morning in our PJs and didn't shower until later in the day...no one needs to see that. Anyway, here's what we made that day:
From the top and going clockwise: sugar cookies, fudge, peanut butter kiss/peanut butter cup cookies, spritz cookies, ginger crinkles, heath bars, and dipped pretzels. The bag to the side contains corn chex candy.

Last Saturday, we decided to spend the day doing fun things as a family rather than filling the day with last minute Christmas preparations. For breakfast we headed to Kneaders for breakfast with Santa and Mrs. Claus. Unlike most children her age, Bridget loves Santa and has no fear about sitting on his lap. She even asked him where his reindeer were. Although we don't live as close to a Kneaders as I would like, it was well worth the 20 minute drive so she could see Santa and we could all enjoy their yummy french toast.
After breakfast we headed to the movie theater to see Tangled. This was actually her second movie theater experience (we went to an IMAX movie on bears over the summer), but this was the first time she'd been to a "full length"movie at the theater. She sat still for about the first half of the movie, and after that she roamed up and down the empty seats next to us and climbed on and off both our laps multiple times. Amazingly, she did pay attention to the whole movie even while moving around and spent the rest of the day talking about various parts of it.