Merry Cookie-mas!

It's tradition. I'm exhausted. I stayed up much too late baking cut-out cookies for my mom's cookie trays.



But its tradition. Who am I to break tradition?!



Each year my mom, my sisters and I bake thousands of cookies. Yes, I said THOUSANDS. I think my count this year, not including the ones I did for the Park Service was around 250. That included gingerbread men, and sugar cookies.



I think mine were the hardest! But that may be because I had to work all week and decided to procrastinate and bake them on Christmas Eve.



But, again, I'm not about to break tradition! So, I got them done and brought them over in the morning.



Our kids slept at my mom's house, their stockings were hung on the wall with care in hopes that Santa momma soon would be there. Santa visited them bringing Koy a pair of snowshoes and Kaisa a Pop Star Karaoke microphone. Our stockings held head lamps, fishing lures, chocolate and hair clips. Everything kids want and need!



The usual breakfast was kicked up a notch with Saima's TUNDRA CHICKS fresh organic eggs, brought right in from the coop outside my mom and dad's house. I'd highly suggest organic eggs over anything bought in a store! They are SOOO GOOD! And, yes, chickens DO lay in the dead of winter above the Arctic Circle! My mom made sourdough hotcakes and we ate sausage and bacon with that.



THEN it was COOKIE TIME. The THOUSANDS of cookies were brought in from the Kunnychuck (entry where they were frozen in totes) and thawed on the table. We made our "list" of people who get trays and started with our family, making our way down the streets of Kotzebue. I believe we ended up with about forty five trays, give or take a few.


See...THOUSANDS!



We had...Gingerbread men that Kaisa decorated, Dean's favorite - Russian Tea Cakes and Lucky Pennies, and Hand Dipped Ginger Crinkles.





There were chocolate chip and M&M cookies, colorful spritz and Elsa's Ultimate Angel Cookies. Peanut Butter Cookies and Egg Nog Cookies, Brownies, and Frosted Sugar Cookies. (UGH!)





There was fudge and oatmeal raisin, fruitcake and oatmeal no-raisin (my sisters hate raisins). And spritz cookies...and spritz cookies and spritz cookies.



And the gift of family was all around us. We laughed, and argued (Hey, my parents had THREE strong willed, hard headed GIRLS) and made tray after tray after tray!



Besides a Finnish Shadow Fox pelt (that I had been EYEING FOREVER), my FAVORITE gift was what I'd been thinking about for a while...a KINDLE. Oh yes, my husband LOVES ME!



So...Merry Christmas to you and yours from above the Arctic Circle. We're all cookied out!