Holiday Baking

I will post pictures of the day later today or tomorrow but wanted to write about the background of today.

A co-worker was describing a girls shopping day she has with the female members of her family. It's something they all look foward to during the holiday season. It got me thinking that we could now do something like that.

You see, for living in this area for so long, my family is not originally from this area. We're New Yorkers through and through. Just living in the midwest. Here's how it happened.

Gretchen (me!) - left NY to attend college in Chicago. Decided to move there after college, met her hubby (who was born and raised in Chicago) and settled into married life in the windy city.

Kristin (my sister) - left NY to attend college in Boston. Moved to Maryland, got married, then moved again to St. Louis. When she moved to St. Louis, we were only 5 hours away and really enjoyed living "close" to family...this was as close to my family as we'd lived for years!

A few years into marital bliss, we wanted to escape the hassles of city living and start a family. Perry found a job in Southern Illinois and here we remain. The plus being that we were just across the Mississippi River from Kristin. YEAH!

My folks - pretty much lived in NY their entire lives with a few short stints here and there (Arkansas and Pennsylvania). Pretty entrenched in NY, though.

Eric (my brother) - the baby of the family left NY to attend the same college as I did in Chicago and still lives up there. That was the final breaking point for my parents. Now, all of their children will firmly growing roots in the midwest and they were spending a good chunk of their time visiting us here. They finally decided to retire and move to the St. Louis area. Double YEAH!

Aunt Carol - has always been close to our family and lived in lots of places during her working life. She retired in Virginia last year and wanted to move closer to family. At this point, no one was left in NY so her options were St. Louis or Maine (where the rest of the family has migrated). I think she wanted a break from snow so she chose St. Louis.

So...after that family history, you see that we have quite the extended family living in this area. It's been so fun creating new traditions now that we are all so close.

The newest (hopefully) tradition is this Girls Day In holiday baking (the idea of spending a day shopping in a mall this time of year is SOOOO unappealing to me!) We're going to pull out some of my grandmother's old holiday recipes and go to town.

I'll post pictures and recipes later today. My one rule for today is that no one can be stressed. My back is making that rule difficult for me, though! Double dang!

And if anyone is still reading this highly exciting post, just remember I'm sitting on the sofa with heating pad on my butt. I warned you I could be dangerous (and slightly boring) with the computer right now!!! :)