Cookies!

Every year I get together with my family to make frosted sugar cookies (and gingerbread on Christmas cookie day). It started 12 years ago during the Christmas season. We would all gather around the counter and help cut the cookies out. My aunt and I would bake them while the little kids played. After they cooled, I would pipe elaborate designs onto all 30 batches and set them outside to harden. My cousin Jeffrey would cut heads of the Santas and pipe on red icing as blood. He would mix red, green, and white to get a nasty gray. Then, he would cut the tops of the heads off and pipe in the gray icing as a brain. Or, he would put the gray on random body parts and call them tumors. Jeffrey was a bit, um, disturbed.

We had such a great time we expanded the event into Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, and once in the summer cookies. Our designs are less elaborate and my aunt makes the cookies the day before everyone gets together. Jeffrey has decided he is too cool to decorate cookies with us and would rather spend his Saturdays at football games and bars. We don't make 30 batches anymore and I spend so much time helping the kids I rarely frost a single cookie. But I still love doing it and the kids love doing it too. Plus, we get lots of yummy cookies to bring home!

The kids hands and faces get covered in frosting, the floor gets coated in sprinkles, and my aunt always makes a delicious dinner. And, of course, we always have Sangria, Long Islands, and Cranberry Slush for the adults. I hope we never stop.