Christmas Cookies

This Christmas we went up to my parents house to make Christmas cookies with my two Aunts. This has been a tradition in my family for a long time, but for a number of years I let others do the baking. This year I was back to being involved, rolling out and cutting the dough. Zuni had mixed up the dough and supervised the baking.

Christmas Sugar Cookies

All the children helped out with the decorating. We used frosting and sprinkles to make many colorful designs. CE decided the frosting was better in her mouth. I’m not sure how many she managed to decorate all the way.

Enjoying the Frosting

Raleigh’s International Festival

This year we went to the 24th annual International Festival held at the Raleigh Convention Center. This was the first time for us and we were looking forward to visiting the booths from Egypt. Unfortunately the information on Egypt was sparse, mainly featuring the Rosetta stone, but the other countries represented made up for it.

There wasn’t much about Egypt

Along one side of the exhibit hall (and half of the next side) they had a row of food vendors, one for each country represented. The strongest smells were wafting out of the Indian and Polish booths, but all of them were serving savory dishes. Zuni and MD only tasted a sample from the Vietnamese booth (some sort of beef strip). The Dutch booth had some interesting desserts, but they weren’t offering samples when we passed by.

We walked through the “bazaar” next. The girls spent time looking at the Russian dolls and Chinese toys. But we didn’t buy anything until we got to the Asian booths. MD got a henna tattoo from the Arab Emirates’ booth and CE got bracelets from an Asian booth. Later on Zuni went back and got MD a ring and got a pretty scarf for herself.

Lots of Russian Dolls

After the bazaar were cultural exhibits, booths where one could talk to the someone about the country. We stopped at the ones representing Scotland, France, and Vietnam to learn about how each of their languages developed.

Vietnam

Myrtle Beach

On November 18th we went down to Myrtle Beach for the annual SEDUG conference. The weather was nicer this year and we were able to enjoy the beach more.

Myrtle Beach Hotel

The girls spent one morning on the beach and later on in the day, when it got warmer, they got in the water. It was quite cold, but enjoyed it anyway.

Walking on the Beach

Friday afternoon, once the the conference was over, we went over to another hotel, the Dunes, where we had a reservation for the night. This hotel has an indoor water park, and when we found out they were running winter specials we decided to jump on the chance. Everyone had a lot of fun going down water slides or just floating along in the lazy river.

Water Slide

MD and her cousin spent the most time on the slides. Zuni went down one with CE, but they both got soaked at the bottom, so CE decided she would stay in the lazy river. I went down the big twisty slide.