Ugh.  Okay, so I did a pretty horrible job of keeping up with blog posts during the Christmas season – which makes me sad because there was soooo much happening that I want to remember in the future, but man, December was crazy and there was just not enough time.  But here I am, still doing it!  Yay me:)

On December 15th, we had our annual Christmas baking day.  Every year, all of the women and little girlies in the family get together to make delicious treats for Christmas.  We bring all of our ingredients and tools together at my mom’s house and whip up big batches of cookies, chocolate covered pretzels, peanut butter balls, knock-off thin mints, and more more more.  We put everything out on a big table, and then the men and boys of the family come to join us for dinner and dessert.  It’s always such a fun, chaotic, sticky, sprinkle-covered time, and I look forward to it every year.  But this year….oh yeah.  We are eating Paleo…..I was pretty nervous about the emotional side of not eating my Christmas favorites, but I planned ahead!  I made these paleo snickerdoodles, and Stormie made paleo chocolate mint macaroons and paleo sugar cookies with yummy cranberry coconut milk icing.  All of the paleo treats were SOOOOO darn yummy!  I didn’t feel left out at all – hooray!

These girls are my sweeties.  They worked their little buns off this year and decorated 90% of the sugar cookies, pretzels, and helped anyone who needed it.  I love their serving spirits:)

This is my brother-in-law Ryan filling up his tray to take home – little did he (or any of us!) know that a few short hours later, he would be headed to the hospital to meet his new daughter;)  And yes, we all get to take home whatever we want from the baking day- it’s kind of like a cookie exchange, but we all make the goodies together for a whole day:)  We took Paleo treats and regular treats home (for the kids).  It was a really good day, and it was good to know that I can withstand all of the melted chocolate, spoonfuls of gooey icing, and melt-in-your-mouth candies – if I so choose:)

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A few days before Christmas, our little family had our annual special Christmas dinner.  We started this tradition a few years ago, and we all really look forward to it every year.  We make some favorite foods, light candles, and sit around the table enjoying our family – just the five of us (and a ratty dog under the table looking for crumbs).

This year we of course did some paleo foods for Tristan and I – and the kids had both paleo and non-paleo to eat.  We didn’t realize until the cooking process that almost all of the foods we had decided to have were Thanksgiving foods.  I guess we didn’t get enough back in November:)  There was a beautiful roasted turkey with carrots, paleo cranberry sauce, canned cranberry sauce (Gemma requested this – the kind that is “stacked” she said – heehee!!), sweet potatoes with ghee, pita bread and hummus (Guini and Gemma’s favorite), paleo pumpkin pie, and paleo STUFFING.  Tristan came up with the most amazing, delicious paleo stuffing recipe and it was sooooooooo good.  Oh, how I want to eat some right now at this very moment.

It was a wonderful night with each other, and I hope that this tradition continues for a long, long time:)

I will write a second post about Christmas eve and Christmas itself – I thought it would be a tad too many photos for one post:)

Merry Christmas past!