Santa Surprise Cookies

These are the cookies my boys made for Santa this year. I always liked this recipe during high school, but haven't had these cookies since then. Luckily Ricky's Aunt Rosalie had the recipe in the family cook book. I used a much larger dough to snickers ratio than you would normally use so that my little boys could easily cover the candy.

1 cup butter
1 cup peanut butter (we used crunchy)
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 package mini Snickers (we just saved our's from Halloween)
chocolate for melting

Combine butter, peanut butter and sugars on medium to low speed until light and fluffy. Slowly add eggs and vanilla until mixed. Mix in flour, baking soda and salt. Unwrap snickers. Make balls of dough; push your finger in the middle to make a place for the Snickers. Then rolls the dough around the candy. Place on greased cookie sheet and cook 10-12 minutes at 325. Drizzle with melted chocolate on the top.

I'm sure Santa will be happy to stop and have a treat at our house :)

Christmas for Toddlers: Mary

Today we focused on Mary. The main message we wanted to get across is that Mary is Jesus' mother. We talked about who their mother is, who mommy's mom is, who daddy's mom is, and who Jesus' mom is. We also talked about Mary's attributes (she is kind, faithful, etc).

Christmas for Toddlers: Family Ornaments

One fun activity you can do with toddlers at Christmas time is buy an ornament kit from Michael's. They sell sets of 4 wooden ornaments with 4 colored markers and 2 glitter glue pens for around $2. The whole family can have a fun evening decorating the ornaments, letting them dry and hanging them on the tree. Our boys love finding the ornaments they made hanging on the tree.

Christmas for Todders: Jesus was Born in Bethlehem

Teaching toddlers about Christmas and why Christ's birth is so important can be a difficult task. This year I will share some of the simple things we are doing to celebrate Christmas and teach our boys about Jesus during Decemeber. Each idea is really simple and can be used as a theme for the day. Today the theme is - Jesus was born in Bethlehem. It doesn't seem like much, but it is important. Over breakfast we talked about where we were all born. (For example, a cousin was just born in Viriginia. Grandpa was a baby in Idaho, etc.) Then we taught them that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. We also went and looked at our beds. We talked about how nice our beds are, and then learned the song Away in a Manger. We told them Jesus didn't have a bed. He had to lay down in the hay.