The Reason Nikki hates to Cook

Ok so I am know to not be a good cook and it is a joke around our house that when Derek started to date me and married me he thought he was getting this amazing women who could cook, sew, and would clean because she has a degree in Home Ec Education. But the truth is I have always hated to cook and didn't have to do it lots growing up because my sister Aly loved to cook and always did. So I thought it would be fun to make homemade chocolate chip cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve with Ashley (Tanis had no interest in it). So I got it all mixed up and when it was done I said this looks really liquidy compared to ones I have made before but I showed Ashley how to drop them on the pan and we got it done and started to bake them. I looked in on them when there was about 1 minute left and the whole cookie sheet was one flat cookie and it was almost dripping off the pan. I called Linda (my mother in law) in and we started to laugh. She asked did you use the small round container for the flour. I said yes and then she told me oh no that is the powdered sugar. So my cookies had no flour just 2 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, 1 cup of brown sugar and I had doubled the amount of chocolate chips because I hate not having enough. Needless to say the were very sweet. I was able to put the right amount of flour in to the mix and they turned out fine but they are a little hard. You can see the 2 different batches in the picture. So from now on Santa I am sorry but you will probably get store bought cookies.

Christmas at the Peterson's

Ashley loved everything she got and her favorites she would act like she had fainted.

Most of the time this is how you would see Tanis. He rarely reacted and we never knew if he liked any of his gifts but he did.

Wyatt was so fun to watch this year. When he figured out what to do he wanted to unwrap everyone's gifts. He thought the object with cookie monster was to step on him and then he would make noise.

Here are the kids with the Santa cookies and his milk before they went to bed.

Every Year the kids get new pj's to wear. The last 2 years I have sewed them. This year I didn't sew the boys shirts but they still turn out adorable. These are courtesy of Nana.

The Trial of Christmas Picture Taking

So I really forgot what it was like to have to take pictures with a almost 2 year old. I now remember why I took the older 2 to Wal-mart or Sears all the time and would spend an hour there while the photographer tried to get a photo. And these few pictures don't even show the drama that was happening in between them. Wyatt was very determined that he was not going to sit in the train position (one kid in front of the other) like I tried to do in the 1st picture. My girlfriend Karen had did it for years with her 4 kids and I thought it was adorable why not try it with mine. Guess I will try again next year. So all in all I think I got one good one which of course is the last one so it wasn't a total failure.