Christmas Cookies at Sonja's

Saturday afternoon (12/1) we joined quite a few other people in making and baking Christmas cookies at Sonja's house. Sonja is in the OT department with Tracy and has made us feel quite welcome here by inviting us to several events since arriving. One of Sonja's roommates, Johanna, loves to make cookies and has the philosophy of "the more, the merrier!" Their apartment was jam packed - wall to wall people with many different kinds of cookies being made. One of the neat things in living here this year is getting to meet people from all over the world. Tracy spent some time talking with a guy from Iran. I heard French being spoken at one point and wondered for a moment if I just hadn't really learned any German at all! It took me a minute of listening to realize that it was indeed another foreign language. I know we can do this very same thing in North Carolina as there are a lot of internationals living there, too, but this year has really tipped the scales with meeting people from other countries - not just Germany.


This was shortly after arriving - there were still many more to join us! We made
sugar cookies with frosting and were glad to find out the Sonja had many cookie
cutters; otherwise we would have used a glass and made just plain old circles.

Frosting the cookies - we had blue, green and white...I didn't realize that we only
had two colors when we left our house. The boys weren't disappointed though since
they still got their fill of sugar. Really doesn't matter in what color it comes!

Noah eating one of far too many cookies! He complained of a tummy ache
and a headache latter that night....I wonder why??

Joel showing his dinosaur with blue stripes. Of course, he filled in the empty spots
with white. No sense eating a sugar cookie with only little stripes of frosting, right?
Random - he's been wearing this shirt and one other for two weeks now and has
two weeks to go with his cast/sling for his shoulder. He has to wear a button-down
since he can't lift his left arm. You can see just a bit of it sticking out of the collar.
He's been a real trooper! No complaining from him. One benefit is that he hasn't
had to take his turn at emptying the dishwasher.

Once we finished our cookies, the table was used by several others for rolling
out their cookies. The only other American there allowed the boys to help him
shape his Snickerdoodles. You can just barely see behind Noah's and Josiah's
heads a couple of branches of a pine tree. I have been wondering what people
do with these as I see a lot of them being sold all over town. I found out! They
hang them on the walls and dangle a few tree ornaments from them.

Johanna is making her cookies using a mold - very time-consuming and very pretty!