Baking Wonderland

Today our Advent countdown led us to a baking bonanza, the fruits (baked goods?) of which we then took around to our neighbors.

We had fun stacking up the baking items as we got out our ingredients, until we got to the part about needing eggs, and realized we didn't have any. 

Steve offered to dig us out from last night's snow so we could go to the store to get some more.  The girls gladly helped - they love raking snow!

We took a quick moment to pose by the snowman we made yesterday - it was dark by the time we finished him, and couldn't get a good shot.  Today, he was snowy, but we were happy to see he was still there!

After our grocery store run, we came back to start in on the sugar cookies.  The girls demonstrate the pose they do whenever we have knives or hot things around (or in this case, when I wanted them to wait on the sprinkles until I'd gotten a picture!).  We call it "Hands on your own body!"

Then the decorating commences...

We ended up making homemade oreos, the sugar cookies, and some mini chocolate chip bunny cakes.  Lots of sweets, lots of fun.

Afterwards, we took a bubble bath and watched a movie while the girls' hair air-dried.  Elena decided to try on Christina's hat, and here is the too-many-pictures-of-cuteness collage that resulted.

Clara wasn't feeling as photogenic today, but she was hysterical in her comments!  Here are two gems:

Scene one - we are in the grocery store parking lot, trying to back out of our spot, while another person has decided to back out of theirs in front of us, in the other direction - so we're at an odd standoff where both cars are trying to figure out how to get out of the other one's way.  Clara said: "Mom, it's like our cars are fighting!!!"

Scene two - Clara finds Steve's headphones with a microphone that he uses sometimes to Skype with.  She puts them on, and very seriously starts in: "This is Officer Clara.  10-4.  10-4!!"