It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...

First of all, it's been under 37 degrees every morning for over a week. That is FREEZING. Well...on the lower end it's freezing. Today was 30. It has been so cold in the mornings because it hasn't rained in weeks. December is usually a dreary, cloudy, rainy month. Not this year. It's been clear and beautiful, but the trade off, of course, is the cold weather in the morning. And even though this causes me some discomfort during my walk into work every morning, I'm still walking into work every morning. Because it's actually pretty nice (sunny, the birds are singing, etc), which is way better than fighting traffic everyday.

We've been slowly getting ourselves into the Christmas state. Thanksgiving weekend, the traditional time when Christmas decorations and trees get put up around America came and went. Scooter was with her dad that weekend, so we waited until Monday evening to put our tiny tree up. The following weekend, we actually put decorations on it and put our stockings up. The next weekend was just this past one. To celebrate, we made sugar cookies. I've never made Christmas cookies before. I've done almond bark pretzels in past years, but never sugar cookies. I thought it'd be a nice way for the kids and I to build a Christmas memory in Oregon. Last year was a pretty crappy year (keep in mind that the first day of trial - which we had thought would be a one day trial - was on December 13th). So this year was our chance to start some Oregonian traditions with both kids. So that meant cutting out sugar cookies and decorating them together. I used my sister's recipe, but substituted whole wheat flour rather than all purpose flour, which made our sugar cookies look more like gingerbread cookies than regular sugar cookies. They're also a little...I don't know....grittier than a normal sugar cookie? Chewier? I can't quite put my finger on it. Other than that, though, they are pretty awesome. And I joked w/ Ben that the ones that didn't get frosting on them (we ran out about 80% of the way through) were "low carb." So...yay to us for making the world's healthiest sugar cookie. Don't you worry...there was still a pound of butter in them and almost as much sugar as "healthy" flour.

We're planning on continuing our "quick trip" tradition from last year. Last year, we went with just Bubba to the coast for a couple of days (we stayed in room 111 on 1/1/11!). This year, we're *hopefully* going to Vancouver, BC for a couple of days. We have the passports, no problem. I'm just a tad concerned about the notarized document allowing me to travel out of the country w/ Scooter. We'll see. Maybe we'll all be in the Christmas spirit this year (ha ha ha). Hmmm...