Home for the holidays

More from my time home in Upstate New York : )

Making Christmas cookies with Mom!

You DON'T make a Christmas pretzel cookie?    : P

I got to spend two weeks with this lady  : )

Grandma made some of her family-famous Tollhouse cookies!

Looking at this photo on my camera after taking it, Grandma couldn't find herself between all of our hair! Haha. She didn't think it was the photo that we could have just taken and she had been in... 

Home  : )

Milan's Duomo - the views

What a gorgeous day in Milan to go atop the Duomo!

We took the elevator most of the way up - but then have more to walk... and stairs to the very top center.

View of the Duomo's piazza - with GIANT Christmas tree!

After our trip to the top... we walked through the Christmas market along the side and back of the Duomo.

We picked up some yummy treats... I love, love, love the variety of almond paste cookies!

We were way up there!!

CHRISTMAS COOKIES!

We arrived back at my apartment in Opera on the 24th of December. And, by my request, we made our family's traditional Christmas cookies!!!

I had shopped around for ingredients here for a while and got what I could find... Mom brought some things too... and I borrowed cookie cutters from a friend at school.

The cookies turned out GREAT and were so, so nice to have. I have not had our Christmas cookies in at least a few years... last winter I was on an amazing trip in New Zealand... the year before we spent as a family... but in Vietnam and Cambodia (and I did not have an oven at my place in Vietnam to even attempt cookie making)... and for a few years in a row before that, Mom and Dad came from New York to spend the holiday with us kids in Denver, Colorado. I don't remember when the last time I had Christmas cookies was.

...I'm sure happy to have had my fill recently   : )