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I loved every Family Home Evening Activity we did on Monday nights in December...

 

December 2: We all went into town and picked a card off the sharing tree at King's. Everyone in the family brought money to purchase a gift together for an anonymous child. 

 

December 9: Josh brought in the Christmas tree and we all helped put the lights and ornaments on it.

 

December 16: We all made sugar cookies together for the first time.

 

December 23: The boys decorated Snoopy gingerbread houses.

 

and December 30: We made sugar cookies (again) and FINALLY delivered goodies to our neighbors and friends!!! This time, we were more prepared and had a better system than the first time. I made two batches of dough (using two different recipes than our first time, too--we were experimenting with which one was the best), then after letting them chill in the fridge, Josh rolled the dough out on the countertop and used only a bell-shaped cookie cutter to cut into the dough. When they were cooked and cooled, I brought the cookies over to the table, where there were a few stations set up for the boys to frost and sprinkle the cookies. Then I had plates set out on the rest of the table to place the decorated cookies onto.

 

As soon as all the cookies were baked and decorated, we wrapped the plates in plastic bags, attached some bottle rockets, and tied on a note. The note said: "RING in the New Year with a BANG!" I came up with the idea and thought it was pretty clever...the bell-shaped cookies were the "Ring" and the bottle rocket fireworks were the "Bang"! For the neighbors that didn't have any children, we took them a sparkling apple cider bottle with a note that said "We hope your New Year is SPARKLING and Bright!"  

 

Then we split up all the plates & bottles into two routes. Josh took two of the boys and half the goodies around our neighborhood, and I took the other two boys and remaining goodies to our friends that live in town. From the time that Josh started rolling out the dough to when we finished delivering the goodies, it was just 3 hours. We were very efficient with the cookie making & decorating, and it was the first time we'd ever split up the delivery routes instead of all of us going together, which worked out really well. I was so glad to finally have that item on my Christmas to-do list crossed off--even if it didn't happen until nearly the new year!