There will be red and green jimmies in the crevices of our dining room chairs until Kingdom Come

On Saturday we held our Second Annual Christmas Cookie Decorating Party. Putting it together was a bit of a last-minute effort this year, but we scaled things back a bit too, so in the end it was still manageable. We did away with the crafts, for one thing. After Liam spent the entire month of December 2008 assembling 36 foam puppets because we had no interest in them at last year's party yet the supplies had already been purchased... I decided the cookie decorating was the only activity needed.It also helped that this year, we have a floor down in the basement, and the beginnings of a toy room down there. (I thought I would manage to get the basement painted before the party, as well as the shelving we inherited from Gramma and Grampa when they sold their house. Not so! Oh well... it's not going anywhere.)This one cracks me up. Liam said he wanted to have pizza at his party, which made our time in the kitchen pretty minimal. Chad had the pizza hot and ready to go before our first guest walked in the door, but it took some time for everyone to arrive and for us to finally sit down to lunch. Mallory was in tears because we wouldn't let her get into the pizza right away. On the bright side, she ate an absolute ton of veggies and dip while she waited. We should delay dinner more often if that's going to be the result.Whatchoo lookin' at? I haven't been dipping into the candy bar... honest. (Says she with the green sugar-encrusted lips!)The end result: some beautifully decorated... err... sugar-laden cookies. It was a lot of fun and we will do it again next year. I am curious to see how this event evolves. Even though we have lots of space for entertaining now, we set our guest limit based on the number of seats we have around the dining room table. (Since the moms all stuck around, that really did fill the house up quickly!) The guest list varied a bit from last year to this based on some new daycare friends. We did not invite any of Liam's school friends this time around, but I'm hoping that by this time next year, he has a name or two to add to the list. I suppose that means someone else will drop off though. Or maybe we'll scrounge up a few more chairs before next December, and try to squeeze a few more bodies in.