In which we do not quite go wassailing...

Christina had wanted to get the girls involved in more community service this holiday season, and we had lots of plans. Somehow, this season just goes so FAST, though, that we have ended up using this week in particular to focus on our giving spirits.

On Monday, the girls went shopping for a family we are sponsoring at work through the Salvation Army. It was their first grocery experience where they walked by the cart almost the entire time, instead of riding. Christina told them we needed to find food that kids would like, because some kids don't have enough food at home. They picked olives, marshmallows, fruit cocktail, fortune cookies, and rice. Christina supplemented their picks a bit to try to round out our offerings. We were proud that the girls dropped all the food in the donation bin themselves, without asking for any of the food back for themselves. :)

For today, it had been our intention to visit a few nursing homes to say hello to the residents and entertain them with the two-year-old spirit (Christina had visions of Jingle Bells being sung, the girls' magic tricks being done, some hugs given out, etc.). Sadly, since we last checked with these homes, they had all instituted a policy of not admitting anyone under 18. Even though the girls are fully vaccinated and not even sniffly at the moment, our wassailing among leaves (hallways?) so green was not meant to be.

We decided to still keep up our idea of a giving spirit, though, and the girls spent the morning drawing on cards that Christina had stamped:

Then we headed to the kitchen to bake up the most colorful holiday treats we could find.

God bless an egg-free recipe that they can just chow down on! Don't worry, the forks never went back in the bowl after this business started.

Brown sugar buttons - a new favorite cookie to make, since the girls' favorite ingredient is brown sugar!

Second batch of cookies - red velvet shortbread. LOTS of red is needed to get any color in these chocolatey cookies.

Somehow, as Christina was doctoring up with the red, Clara got her hands into the blue food coloring. At least it matched her pajamas.

By the end of a very giggly morning, we had four batches of cookies baked.

After the last step of the last cookie (dipping the shortbread into white chocolate) Christina let the girls have the white chocolate bowl. Very spontaneously, Elena started feeding it to Clara.

Not surprisingly, she seemed to expect some reciprocity.

Dismay! Clara had a very hard time sharing and following directions all day today, but here it at least stayed on a small scale, and she was guilted into sharing with her sister. (Now, the flopping down in defiance on the floor of the mall this afternoon ended as a different story...)

Fine motor skills are still not really a strong point, so as the girls napped Christina packaged the goodies:

And then when the girls awoke we took the goodies out to "the people" as the girls kept saying. "Merry Christmas a the people" was their exact phrasing.

So, in the end, it was only a Merry Christmas through the door. And waving at one smiling older woman in a wheelchair who was keeping pretty close tabs on one of the doors. We tried to remedy the lack of interaction by having the girls put quarters in all the Salvation Army bell-ringer's buckets we came across. There, they shouted "Merry Christmas" quite merrily each time. Still, not wassailing...but perhaps we'll try again in the sunny climes of Arizona.