Merry Christmas, Merry Merry Christmas

I have the Trans-Siberian Orchestra soundtrack in my car. Song #3 starts out as God Rest You Merry Gentleman, but then at 1:52, it switches to "Merry Christmas, Merry Merry Christmas". It's Landon and my favorite song and I've listened to the section between 1:52-3:12 about 1100 times since the Friday after Thanksgiving. It just sums up exactly how I feel about the holidays - happy, booming, harmonious... it reminds me of wrapping presents and doing the dishes after dinner during advent when I was in high school. My mom always had that CD playing.

The other thing that just is Christmas to me is making my great-grandma's sugar cookies. We're doing the hard part tomorrow - the rolling and cutting, baking and decorating, but I thought I should get the dough made today.

And not just because I waned an extra 24 hours to eat the dough before it was baked.

Last Christmas I made these with the little hand mixer I got from my grandma when they moved to their retirement community and she got all excited about never having to cook again. The poor thing nearly shorted out with all the dough, so this year I was super excited to use my big sexy stand mixer. It was an improvement, but even that machine needed to take a break after all the mixing.

The triple batch may have been a bit much.

The dough is now in a mixing bowl, covered in cling wrap, and sitting in the fridge. One side of the bowl may or may not have lost all its clingyness because I keep pulling up the wrap to steal little bits of dough. It is dangerously delicious.

And speaking of dough (and deliciousness), the Biscuit has not been feeling well the last few days. She hasn't had a fever, but she's been fussy, waking up frequently at night, and even threw up once on Wednesday. We thought she might be getting better, but then last night she threw up ALL over me and then repeated the performance this morning (but this time, all over her dad- at least she's fair). After each incident she'd just sit there in your arms, covered in her foul smelling formula, looking at you like, "oh sigh, I suppose we'll have to get up then?" It was quietly pathetic and the blank stare was freaking me out.

So we headed to our pediatrician's Saturday clinic. Landon came along since JP had a swim lesson and he's had a stubborn cough himself. We were first in line and walked out with an antibiotic for Clairebear and a cough suppressant for Landon. After half a bottle of pedialyte, a dose of the omnicef, and several naps, Claire seemed almost back to her happy, smiley self.

Her brother is very relieved. Last week when his own fever broke, he overheard JP and I saying that he was doing better. His face lit up and the first thing he said was "I can touch Clairebear now?!"

Our house has over 2,500 square feet, but they always seem to share the same 24 square inches.

Merry Christmas Merry Merry Christmas!