Cookies and a full day

It has been a busy, busy weekend here. Saturday afternoon J16 and I finally made a trip to Kalona to the Stringtown Grocery and the Twin County Dairy cheese house. Mmmmm.....

Now I've got whole wheat flour and oatmeal. Yeah!!

I spent the evening baking. First, one of V's favorites:

Biscotti. Yummy- and no added fat except the almonds.

Then peppermint kisses.

Last year, after the holidays, I stocked up on the peppermint kisses when they were on deep discount and tucked them in the fridge drawer. Popped on top of chocolate drop cookies they are an upscale version of peanutbutter blossoms. The recipe made LOTS- probably 5 dozen. So I took a few dozen to church this morning for the soup luncheon that capped the day's festivities.

This was the big day for the children at church.

K10 was a shepherd. See him adoring the baby?!

LOL! They passed the baby Jesus down the line so everyone could see him.

Even the sheep! They have these great sheep costumes that consist of a white stocking hat with ears sewn on. The preschoolers are all the sheep and get herded in to sing. It's too cute.

I10 was a reader for the program but mostly played in the band.

He had to be there at 7:30 this morning and played at both services. My parents came up for the Christmas program and stayed for the second service and lunch. Dad actually had tears in his eyes following the band playing the postlude. I did shoot some video but the file is too big for Blogger to upload. Sorry, you'll just have to imagine how good they sounded.

J16 sang in the high school choir- a version of the Magnificat. They sounded great- and again the file was too large. Ugh. Too bad Blogger has such a small file size for video.

Then was the soup luncheon. This is one of the high school fundraisers. They are working for the next trip to the national youth convention in 2012.

Now here's something you don't see everyday:

A whole bunch of high school students willingly washing dishes!

We ended up not going caroling- that we usually do. Partly because it had already been a long day and partly because my parents were in town. We did our gift exchange with them this afternoon so that's done if the weather turns bad later in the week. Mom got me another over the sink strainer. She was a bit worried because I already have one. But I can think of times when I would have loved to have another.

I've got three days of work this week. The children have 2 more days of school and then are off for two weeks for winter break.

We've got menus planned for the week. Solstice in on Tuesday and Christmas coming up quickly. I found out that our church is serving lunch at the Free Lunch program on Friday the 24th. We didn't make it on the day after Thanksgiving. I'll have to ask the children if they want to go. They actually have enjoyed it when we have done it in the past and it is a good eye opener for them. We'll see.

Have a great week everyone.