Cooookies!

What’s Christmas time without some Christmas cookies? Remember the Cookie Extravaganza from last year? Well, Lara’s not in Waco any longer and we’re way down in the Valley, so I knew there was no Cookie Extravaganza in the cards for this year. So when I saw that the sweet church where we’ve been worshiping was having a Cookie Exchange, I figured I’d get my cookie fix that way! Saturday afternoon I made a batch of oatmeal-chocolate chip- pecan cookies

(which reminded me why I don’t do more baking in my little house!), and by Sunday afternoon I was ready for the big Exchange!
But this was a Cookie Exchange with a twist! Instead of coming with a batch of one kind of cookies and going home with lots of other kinds of cookies, this was an exchange to make goody bags to give to your neighbors. What a great idea! We met at a lovely Italian restaurant (another departure from any CE I’ve ever been a part of) and after we got some basic instructions we got to work on making those gift bags!
Here’s a nice civilized picture of us before the exchange actually started –

Let the fun begin!

Oh yeah, baby – there were some fine cookies there!

After we gathered our cookie selection, it was off to put together the gift bags.

Once the bags were filled, we moved on to the food –

(After the salad course I was too busy eating to worry about documenting the rest of the meal. Trust me – it was excellent!)
We had a great speaker – Terry Dunn from Alaska

who shared from her heart how Jesus has healed and rescued her and how He is using her today. We were all blessed!
And then to round out a pretty perfect Sunday afternoon, the one guy at the party came to visit down at our end of the table.

Mmmmmm…..
(Have I mentioned lately that it’s only three weeks until I’ll be holding our own little ones?
Just sayin…)