Perfect Christmas Snow

Up at Bear Lake we had lovely snow for Christmas.
Driving down Logan Canyon was also very Christmas-y.
The snowmobiles had evidently been out enjoying themselves,
and the plows had huge heaps of snow by the sides of the road--
taller than my parents' heads, as you can see in the photo--
and the trees looked all flocked.
Best, however, were the ice crystals that had formed on the snow surface:

I'm glad I got some pretty Christmas snow at Bear Lake,
because it had been raining down at lower elevations
and the snow was mostly gone except for a patch here and there.
It rained again today.
Sigh.

Spirit Cookies and Holey Bread

I am up at my parents' house for Christmas week.
We had a Solstice Party on the 21st and my brother's family came too.
We stayed up very late and watched the lunar eclipse (as well as we could through the partly cloudy skies) and we made cookies.
Mom had just bought a cookie press from Pampered Chef, to use making "spritz" cookies.
When my dad was little he used to call them "spirit" cookies (because he couldn't pronounce "spritz".) We thought that was very cute.
Here's Mom & Benjamin practicing with the cookie press:

DRAT this thing!!

But the baked cookies look pretty cute after all
(and they taste marvelous.)

Mom also let her bread rise too high during this last baking and we ended up with holey bread. It is perfect for frying an egg inside, though, which is what I had for breakfast today!