It's Cookie Baking Day!

[Sung to the tune of, "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas"]

It's beginning to smell a lot like cookies,

Everywhere we bake;

Take a look in the stove and see dough rising once again

With butterscotch morsels all aflow.

It's beginning to smell a lot like cookies,

Flour in all our hair!

But the prettiest sight to see are the cookies that will be

Full of peanuts there.

A batch of butterscotch morsels, one of chocolate chip

Is the wish of Barbie and Jen;

Cookies that melt and will make your heart tick

Is the hope of Kelsey and Vick;

And Kath and Dave can hardly wait for tins of treats again.

It's beginning to smell a lot like cookies,

All throughout the house;

There's a batch in the dining room, in the living room as well,

The butter kind that really, really melt.

It's beginning to smell a lot like cookies;

Soon we'll have cooked the dough,

And the best ingredient is the one Aunt Mabel sent

From Colora--do!

Eileen, the hostess with the mostest, and Jen, the next Gen:

Michelle, Jen and Vicki start rolling in dough:

Sometimes they were real cut-ups:

Nick was in charge of logistics and parchment paper.  Here, he applies his chef-ly talents to get the baking sheets JUST RIGHT:

Kathy served as all around sous-chef and whip-cracker:

Barb was in charge of supervising the finishing touches:

These three did the most work, so they insisted on being first in line to taste-test the oatmeal butterscotchies just hot out of the oven:

All was not hard labor, however.  Here, Kathy and Michelle share a festive moment as they conspire to plan Pirate Pollyanna strategy for next weekend at Eileen's and Tom's house:

Nick brought Kelsey and little Nick Jr. (some are dubbing him Czar Nicholas in honor of his second cousin, Sir William).  Here, She-Who-Has-Not-Been-Named (Kelsey says that she is going to let little Nick Jr. decide on what Sue will be called once he's talking) gets the honor of changing the royal robes:

But Kelsey gets the Mom Honor of feeding little Nick his lunch:

Meanwhile, Uncle Tom is holding the sofa down just in case it's tempted to fly away:

David ran out on an errand and brought Kathy back her birthday prezzy - a purple-and-white stone heart that we had circled in gold and made into a pendant.  Kathy plans to sport this at the Pollyanna Party:

No great epic is complete without a recounting of the results of battle.  Here are the author's two favorite cookies - the "Piper Cookie," by Jen, and the "Nick Jr." cookie by Kelsey:

... and, after the battle, couriers were heard roaming the field of combat, crying, "Bring Out Your Dead!" And so it was

Happy Holidays, everyone, and be sure to have yourself some of your own special brand of magic Christmas Cookies!