Oh 'deer!

"And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them . . . "

and said, Housewives of Israel,

"for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."

and you shall celebrate with all manner of baking and crafts . . .

and you shall remain FESTIVE at all times. Fa la la la la!

No, no that isn't right!

But that didn't stop me from attempting to bake. And thus there is another addition to the Baking Hall of Shame. In my defense, baking at my house is not just combining ingredients and putting them in the oven. There is the added challenge of removing an 18 month old from the counter, side-stepping the entire contents of the Tuppleware cabinet that the 18 month old has emptied on the floor, yelling at everyone to steer clear of the oven, re-rolling 10 feet of aluminum foil, and trying to ensure that both boys eat less than their own weight in M&Ms.

First, we attempted to make reindeer cookies. This was not a good project for a 4 year old sous chef. You have to move fast to add the decorations once these come out of the oven. And you need substantially more chocolate covered pretzels than I planned for. So in the end we ended up with the reindeer from Santa's (motley) ground crew.

• Rabid (red eyes)


• Jaundiced (yellow eyes)


• Fighters (missing antlers)


• Toupee wearers (replacement plain antlers)

So now I have lots of gingerbread dough and M&Ms and no place to go. The next attempt is to make regular gingerbread cookies and press M&Ms into a tree shape. It was a culinary MacGuyver moment . . . until I went to move them and the M&Ms fell out. Fail.

This is what M&Ms look like when they are missing all the green ones. Sad. And where did all those blue ones come from? You know, when I started eating M&Ms there were no blue ones . . .

Fortunately, all was not lost for this day.

We did get to go to Jackson's Christmas program and he followed the advice of Buddy the Elf -

"The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear."

But Jackson knows the real story . . .

"The animals saw such a wonderful sight.

Baby Jesus was born in the stable that night.

Mary was thankful and filled with great joy.

God blessed the word with this new baby boy."