My family isn't much into gift-giving. My parents bought us gifts when we were children, and I even went and bought my parents gifts when I was a child. Once my brother and I got to be of an age where we had our own money, the gifts stopped. We decorate the tree together and make cookies together a couple of days before Christmas. My mom invites 40 family members and friends over for Christmas Eve, and on Christmas morning just the five of us (Mom, Dad, Brother, The Doc and I) eat cinnamon rolls together. This year because my parents have been up in the mountains remodeling a couple of houses for months, everything is more low key. They brought an umbrella tree in from the garden and put white lights on it, and they canceled the shindig in favor of a smaller dinner. We will still have breakfast together tomorrow, and we will most certainly eat cinnamon rolls. It doesn't feel much like Christmas, though.
The Doc's family loves gift giving. I had never before experienced the kind of mad rush to buy hundreds of dollars worth of gifts until last year. I was out of the country for our first Christmas together, and therefore I was exempt. I will admit that it was somewhat exhilarating to buy all of those gifts, but at the end of it all I mostly was just swearing up and down that I would never do it again. I spent months dreading another Christmas like that. The Doc's parents announced in November that it might be a good idea if we all just drew one name and bought one gift, since The Good Doctor is back in school, as is his sister-in-law, and I work in a non-profit, so I am poor -- oh yeah, and his parents want to buy a new couch, so they can't afford it either. I was stoked, and I think everyone was relieved. The Doc finished his last final on Friday. We had not gotten around to any Christmas stuff. He works on Saturday. We did no Christmas stuff on Saturday.
That left us Sunday and Monday morning (today). I woke him up at ten on Sunday. He whined and complained, but eventually got out of bed. We walked down the street to the fabulous farmers market. I bought root vegetables, a butternut squash and a bottle of apple cider. We came home and made pancakes. Then we figured we ought to go buy our two gifts. The biggest problem we had was parking. It took us between 5-10 minutes to park at both of the stores we went to. Then we went in, picked out the gifts, and got out without much of a wait in line in either case. It was fabulous. We then stopped by my parents house to pick up a few things. I really wanted to pick up some of my mom's cookie cutters, but of course I forgot them.
That brings us to today's project -- Christmas cookies. I forgot to charge my camera battery, so you wont get details on this project. I am making Great-Grandma's sugar cookies. The Doc is making chocolate chips according to the tollhouse recipe. I have made my cookie dough, but I am waiting for The Doc to get back with the bounty he went to fetch at the grocery store. Since I forgot the cookie cutters, I asked if he could look for some at the store to add to my paltry collection at the house here. This Christmas it seems we will have cookies in the following shapes: Bell, Ghost, Dog Bone, Martini Glass and Dove. The bell and the dove seem pretty in sync with the season. The ghost -- well I am going to call it the Ghost of Christmas past, if anyone asks. The martini glass... well, if we had actually stressed out shopping, it would make more sense. The dog bone? Oh heck, I don't know. I will paint it red and green and it will make a lot of sense.
I hope The Doc gets home soon, I need to get baking.
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