The Hughes Family: First half of December

Well the Hughes have been busy little bees this month...imagine that? After Thanksgiving we had Christopher's 29th birthday. It was a very low key day of shopping and just hanging out around the house. The next week I had to bake 36 sugar cookies for Katherine's preschool class to decorate. Definitely wasn't on my original to do list as I have a ton of catch up work to complete for the shop and I still wasn't finished shopping for Christmas yet! YIKES! We managed to get the cookies made and to school in time for them to have a BLAST decorating. Katherine of course is my daughter and really didn't want the cookie...she MUCH preferred the icing! :)

That Friday Chris and I snuck away while Katherine was at school to go Christmas shopping for the girls. We managed to get but one thing on our list done and lunch eaten in an hour and a half...talk about speed shopping! :)

Chris had to work some last weekend so they girls and I played around the house and finished up some Christmas shopping for Daddy. The Army/Navy Game was on Saturday, so while Chris watched that I started wrapping Christmas gifts....I think I may still be wrapping at New Year's...aagghh!!! On Sunday I had the crazy idea (Thanks to Katie Freakley) that I should make hard candy this year to give as gifts to the many Christmas parties that we are invited to this year. So Monday, Katherine, Caroline and I buzzed around town on a hunt for flavoring oils for the candy. We found a very cute store with the oils in Palm Bay and the candy making expedition 2009 began.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I made 5 batches or over 10 POUNDS of hard candy. I think I may have gone a bit....OVERBOARD. But it was SO easy to make and a TON of fun. And as a bonus the house smelled WONDERFUL. :) I made cinnamon, peppermint, orange, lemon and grape candy and I must admit that it is very tasty. My favorite is the cinnamon....it's like eating a fireball...LOVE IT! :) So I now have plenty of gifts for the Christmas parties, teacher gifts, etc, etc, etc...and we will still probably be eating it for the next year. HA! :)

Also this week I had the chore of baking 2 batches of sugar cookies...hold that...star-shaped sugar cookies for Katherine's Christmas program which is today. SO Katherine and I baked, and baked, and baked, and baked, and baked. In the end I had 120 star shaped sugar cookies for her school and probably 60 more non-shaped sugar cookies for us to eat. I got so sick of cutting out shapes that I began just picking up the outside edges of the dough and plopping it on a cookie sheet. Hey, if we're the only ones eating them who cares what they look like as long as they taste good...right?! :) Katherine helped me decorate them yesterday and I must say they turned out pretty well...I should have taken a picture...oh well!

Today is Katherine's Christmas program at church and boy was she excited to put on her "Christmas princess dress." She is definitely a girly girl. I will post pictures from her program later today. She was the cutest thing going into school this morning. She ran up to Tyler (one of the twin boys in her class) and grabbed his hand and they walked into school together holding hands and grinning at each other. I wish I had a camera with me! It was the cutest thing!

Well I'm off to see her Christmas Program, so check back later for more pictures!!