So here is the thing about Alaska trees - they are scrawny.  Like Charlie-Brown-Christmas-tree scrawny.  Buying a lush, Lower-48 style tree will run you a good $50 (I hear they ship 'em up from Oregon or Washington) so the general consensus - at least amongst our group of friends who are "sharing" a tree at Helen's and Justin's house - was to just go cut one down.  I present to you "our" beautiful Christmas tree:

Last weekend was the beginning of Christmas prep so Josh and I headed over to Helen's and joined her and Kate for some tree-trimming and cookie-making.  We strung cranberries first - messy!

Helen has some great ornaments, courtesy of her mom.

We spent several hours assembling and baking Christmas cookies - so much fun!  I think we ate as many as we made.  Josh ate more than he made, considering he sat on the couch with Pooch and watched the Giants (lose) for four hours.  He took pictures and decorated a few cookies during commercial breaks.

Can you tell which one of these is Josh's?

Yeah.

Justin loves these no-bake cookies called "Haystacks" - they are just chow mein noodles covered in melted chocolate chips.  And they are AMAZING.  Make them.  We made these with plain old chocolate chips but I did a quick Google and found recipes with peanut butter chips, mini-marshmallows, etc.

We probably made two Christmases worth of cookies and it was really a lot of fun.  I plan on making a batch of Rose Felice's Italian cookies this weekend, too.  It's just not Christmas without an Italian cookie.

A quick note: many thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Payne and Nicho for their generous gift - a surprise case of wine from Knapp Winery came our way yesterday afternoon.  We love you guys and we miss you!  Thank you so much for thinking of us.  Just an FYI for you wine lovers out there, the Free Shipping deal I posted about a few weeks ago has been extended until December 22^nd - so if you still just don't know what to get me for my birthday...