Christmas Eve birthday, baking fun, Christmas celebrations, and a silly test!

I woke up on Christmas Eve and gave dinner a short thought.  I wanted to fix a side dish for the meal and settled on cornbread.  While looking for my bag of conrmeal, i spied a box of this corn muffin mix in the back. 

 With all these yummy wholesome ingredients! I can't even pronounce some of them! Being supermom that I am not, I decided to go ahead and bake up a batch of this chemically laden food.  But for my family, i knew one box was not enough and I wasn't about to go to the store to fetch another.  So I pulled out my bag of conrmeal and made another batch from scratch.

Now I had to know, which ones would my kids like better? only Yes-only I would really care about this
We had a taste test between both of them and honestly, it was split down the middle.  My one daughter who loved #1 (Jiffy Mix) was so sure that was the one I  made!  When I asked those who picked #1 what they liked better, they all said the same thing-it was sweeter.  True indeed-my version had no sugar, just some honey.  Interesting experiment, but it's not going to make me run out and buy Jiffy unless I'm seriously pressed for time!!

Next, we had to get prepared for my 7 yo daughters's birthday which actually is on Christmas Eve.  She wanted  a giant M and M cookie, which my 11 year old helped me make.  Turned out quite yummy!

We made a double batch of dough and made the rest into cookies.  After sampling a dozen or so, we packaged up the rest to send home with my oldest son, who lives in an apartment on his own.  We often get requests from he and his roommate for home baked goodies.  We're happy to comply!

We were a little behind on getting our annual Christmas gifts out to our sweet neighbors, as we've had nonstop illness over here for the past 3 weeks.  Fortunately, we hadn't planned something too difficult.  We made up a dozen jars of homeade strawberry jam (so yummy!)

We gave a fresh baked loaf of bread with each, tied with a cute Christmas ribbon!

 Simple, but a nice way to let them know how much we appreciate them!

Now onto Christmas morning!  After a yummy pancake breakfast, the present opening began.  The big gift this year?  An X-Box 360!  This is our first venture into video game land, so hopefully it goes smoothly!

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 We even had a stealth spiderman among us...

And look, my handsome 19 year old even joined us before he had to go into work.  It was great to have him!

Lots of legos, giftcards, DVDs, toys, and other stuff left a big bunch of smiling kids!

 \After a yummy Christmas dinner that nite made by Chef Dad, we had a happy birthday Jesus celebration.  Everyone sang and then dug into some pie and ice cream!

What a great Christmas celebration!  We are looking forward to many more blessings in the coming year!