'Twas the Night Before Christmas

and the kids don't want to go to sleep.  K keeps popping up.  I think N and J are busy with Legos in N's room.

Here is a picture of J at the final stop of our tacky light tour.  We got to get out and walk around a park in the city that was full of these lit-up reindeer.  J has a pop in one hand and a candy apple in the other. 

I made lots of Christmas cookies today and I took some of them to some friends' houses.  This year all my cookies were refrigerator slice-and-bake.  I made the dough myself, though, over the past week.  Some of it I've kept in the freezer until today.  My favorite was a walnut shortbread cookie.  Originally the recipe was for hazelnuts, but while they were even better that way, there was an occasional hard piece of shell in them, so I was afraid to give them away and break someone's tooth.  Also, they were supposed to have chocolate drizzled over them, but I couldn't get it to melt right on the hazelnut ones so I just spread the melted chocolate.  I thought they were fine without it so I just left it off the walnut ones. 

I baked a frozen Mrs. Smith pumpkin pie for tomorrows dessert (if we want something other than cookies).  I got us a frozen duck that I've been thawing for a couple days.  I'm going to learn to cook a duck.  Our refrigerator is so full that there is no room for my roll dough that is supposed to be refrigerated overnight.  I checked out the overnight temperature profile, and the temperature will range from about 42 to 36 overnight at the airport.  We'll probably be a little cooler.  I put the roll dough in my car to keep it cold and protect it from animals.

K still keeps popping out of bed.  She is too excited to sleep but Santa can't fill her stocking until she falls asleep.  It could be that Santa is getting too tired to do his job so she'd better fall asleep soon.  It's already 11:09 p.m.  She fell asleep around 8:30 p.m., but woke back up to wait for Santa.