The Christmas season is in full swing at this point. Any store you enter has Christmas music playing and buildings are festooned with greenery and bright holiday lights. Retail stores are counting down the number of buying days until Christmas and grocery stores have eggnog and candy canes in stock. All of these things make me almost wish for snow, almost but not quite.
Growing up in the northeast, it is still strange for me to experience such mild weather in December. When I was a kid in New England we often saw our first snow in November. The chances that there would be snow on the ground at Christmas was pretty good. At the very least we could count on the temperatures hovering around freezing. Many a Christmas Break from school was filled with snow related activities. Building snow forts, making a snowman, or sledding. A sled was not necessary to go sledding. A "flying saucer" was a fantastic device. When I was very young they were made of metal, but later models were made of a hard plastic. I also remember several of us piling onto a tobaggon. The bottom of the tobaggon had to be waxed for best results. Later on, before I got too old and mature, I remember using a snow tube. I believe this may have belonged to one of my younger siblings. But boy, do I remember how well it flew over the snow. Made me wish that I'd had one when I was little.
Our high temperature today is supposed to be about 72 and tomorrow's high is forecast for 76. It feels pretty strange listening to all that glorious Christmas music wearing shorts. It reminds me of a commercial on tv where Christmas lights are strung on a palm tree. While we don't have any palm trees in this area, I have seen Christmas lights strung on oak and poplar trees. Looks a little strange if you're unaccustomed to anything other than a pine type tree.
Speaking of lights, I'm so tired of cheaply made Christmas lights. I just bought 3 new strings of Christmas lights for my tree and I noticed yesterday that one of them is not working. We've searched the whole string to try to find a blown bulb, and we checked the fuses. Despite these measures we still can't figure out why the string quit. I would much rather pay a little more per string and have them work for a couple of years. As it is this particular string lasted about a week. Not a very good return on my money.
The kids and I plan to bake cookies tonight. We won't be making sugar cookies in Christmas shapes, but we will probably make several different kind, such as chocolate chip, mint chocolate chip, oatmeal scotchies and peanut butter. What we make will be determined in part by what kind of "chips" I have in the freezer. I purchased several different kinds last year and put them into the freezer. We made cookies around Christmas last year and I thought we might bake some again before the end of winter. We didn't however.
We might also make some oatmeal raisin cookies. I've certainly got enough oatmeal here. The kids were eating oatmeal for breakfast pretty regularly, so I always tried to keep a supply on hand. Then one day, they decided they were tired of it so that left us with several good sized containers in the pantry. How many batches of cookies we make is going to depend on several variables. We might make some tonight and then again tomorrow or tomorrow night. Whether or not I bake during the day is questionable. I may not want to have the oven on if it is 76 outside, so I might wait until after supper to bake any additional batches of cookies.
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