Every Christmas Counts




Growing up making sugar cookies was a Christmas tradition in my family. I don’t know how it got started. But what I do know was my mom’s sugar cookies were the best!

With my sister years ago...

Then my mom passed away and somehow the tradition of sitting around the kitchen table frosting and sprinkling colored sugar on the cookies my mom made was no more. I really didn’t take noticed until Christmas Eve this year as my husband and I worked in the kitchen making sugar cookies. I made the dough the previous day and we just had to cut out the cookies, bake and decorate them.

Traditionally my mom had various cookie cutter shapes for Christmas; candy cane, bells, stars, Christmas trees, etc… but for us, we haven’t accumulated such things yet, so out cookies were cut out using a plastic cup. But my husband and I sat at our kitchen table and we frosted them and sprinkled colored sugar on them. I hope next year my twins will be up there with us sprinkling colored sugar on the frosted sugar cookies.

Now, as I was making these cookies I realized the last time I had sugar cookies at Christmas was my last Christmas with my mom back in 2007. It wasn’t just that the cookie making tradition stopped, but the traditional cookies seemed to have stopped when my mom wasn’t around anymore.

My nephew when he was little



 I don’t wish to sound sad at the happiest time of the year and I don’t wish to be pitied either. But thinking about my mom I realized that you never know when your last Christmas with a family member will be. Sure I will see my mom again, like every Christian I believe I will see all my loved ones again. But our time in this mortal life is so short and goes by in a blink of an eye and our world can change so easily that making the most of each moment and each holiday really matters.



This was my children’s first Christmas. I’ll never get that again. I’ll never have another Christmas where my husband and I were parents for the first time. There may not have been a lot under our tree this year. My kids won’t remember this Christmas, but I will.



My sister helping my dad

When it’s my turn to go home to heaven I want my mind to be full of loud, full Christmases, full of family, full of children anxiously waiting by the Christmas tree since 5am waiting to open their presents from Santa Claus.
I want holidays thick with family tradition and full of family and love. I want every year to have people around my kitchen table decorating sugar cookies because I’ve realized every Christmas counts in my book and I don’t want to have any regrets on any of them.