That's the way the cookie crumbles...

Last week was super busy with holiday parties and wedding work. We had our final meeting with our minister and ironed out all of the details. I felt so much better after that and I’m really excited to get to the big day!

Friday night we celebrated Shawn’s 26th birthday with a family dinner at Mac’s. His sister Candice brought baby Victoria and Robert had fun feeding her. We’re all really excited because in addition to newborn Victoria, they are adopting their newborn nephew and it should be finalized this week. What an amazing Christmas gift! I cannot wait to shower the new baby boy with goodies.

Robert feeding baby Victoria.

Saturday was a crazy day as we prepared for our First Annual Christmas Cookie Party. I baked four different cookies, three of which came from Martha Stewart’s Cookies book: lacy nut, dulce de leche and orange cardamom Madeleines. The third came from Southern Living: chai tea sugar cookie with egg nog icing. They all turned out to be delicious. I think my favorite was the chai tea and the most difficult to make were the lacy nut. Martha is a little over ambitious with her cookies I think.

Courtney with Santa Molly.

Cookies galore!

Chai tea, peanut butter kisses, no bake
chocolate oatmeal, chow chow and lacy nut!

Orange cardamom madeleines, Russian tea cakes,
NY Times chocolate chip, dulce de leche and gingerbread.

This was also Courtney's going away party. Her job is taking her to New York City after our wedding (how sweet of her was it to negotiate that?!). Elisha and I put together a bag of essentials for living in the city.

Courtney and her "Mary Poppins" messenger bag.

The guys showing us how to rock out.

Everyone came dressed to the nines in their tackiest Christmas outfits. We had prizes – the best cookie was the New York Times chocolate chip and Kevin got the nutcracker trophy. Our nutcracker likes wine just like us.

The best dressed was given to Calvin for his red, belly baring turtle neck and green cardigan combination. He received a tacky apron with pinup Christmas girls on it.

I wish I had more pictures but we honestly forgot and the ones we did get were crazy blurry because of the wine involved.

And what blog post would be complete without a funny picture of Jack and Molly. My Molly, you have grown.