Austin, TX

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been very busy. I have baked so many cookies I could have fed an army. In fact I did feed some, if not the entire, Army. I adopted two troops for the holidays this year. One troop has as a member the son of one of my cake club members. I’d heard that one of the ladies had a son in Iraq and I asked her if I could adopt his troop. She told me that her son was home but that another member’s son was still in Iraq. I contacted her and she was very happy to have my help. Ellen had been doing her best to bake cookies and ready packages for the 41 members of her son’s troop. With work and baking she was only half way done so having me help her out was, as she put it, “a god-send”. I was happy to do it and when I told another friend about my baking efforts she joined in and made several dozen cookies, too. Not only that but her church sent along cards done by their Sunday School and two big bags of personal hygiene stuff like toothbrushes, toothpaste, mouthwash and dental floss. In addition I decided to adopt a second troop, a small one consisting of only six people, four men and two women. I packed their box full of nuts, pop tarts, candy, cookies, popcorn, drink flavors for bottled water and personal hygiene products. You know, I used to think that those “personal sized” toilet paper packets were stupid until I saw them listed often on soldier’s request lists. The troops can be out on missions for several days and it can be challenging to find bathrooms and toilet paper can become a premium item to have on you! A lot of the troops don’t have access to the base stores to purchase every day items that we take for granted. Women are desperately in need of feminine hygiene items like tampax.

It’s a bit late to adopt a troop for Christmas at this point, with Christmas a week away but it’s so great for troop moral to have packages from home so please think about doing it anyway. A great place to find a troop to support is AnySoldier.com The site allows you to read through the requests sent by troops serving in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. You can filter the list if you want a troop from a particular branch or if you want someone from your state or with the same last name. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. The troops are happy with anything you want to send and home baked goodies are a particular favourite.

Last night I stayed up late baking cookies for my library kids. I am a storyteller at our local library and at the end of storytime each week we do a craft. Several weeks ago I suggested letting the kids decorate cookies for Santa one day and today was that day. I made sugar cookies and cut out hearts, dipping each in chocolate. I had a plan. The plan was to make reindeer cookies. Each child got two cookies, two mini red m&m’s for noses, four regular sized chocolate m&m’s for eyes, two small pretzels for antlers and a snack size ziplock bag with a spoonful of royal icing for “glue”. The cookies cake out soooo cute!

Take the same heart cookie cutter and mini m&ms, add red sprinkles and coconut and you can also make Santa cookies:

These cookies are so fun and easy to decorate with your kids. Serve them up with a nice cup of hot cocoa and if you’re looking for more “snow day” activities, check out Summer’s blog for more fun ideas.

Christmas, Army, Troops, Adopt, Cookies, Reindeer, Santa, Kids, Easy, Snow Day, Fun