The best gift: Christmas memories

The Christmas season is over, but the leftovers and the pine needles — and hopefully some fantastic memories — remain.

One of my favorite memories from this Christmas was having my girlfriends and their children over to my house for an evening of cookie making last week.

Now that we're all getting older, so are my friends' little ones and it was the first year they were all old enough that we could all get together for a Christmas cookie baking session.

At 1, 3 and 4 years old, Ashtyn, Scarlett and Austin were only good for a couple dozen cookies before they figured out it was far more entertaining to flip their aprons around like little capes and run through my condo pretending to be superheroes.

But the little gingerbread men and star cutouts they did make were adorable, smothered in icing and then thoroughly coated in sprinkles. A sugar sensation in an assortment of colors, they just seem to taste better when designed by toddlers.

My girlfriends and I had a great time just watching them, and helping to guide their little hands to press the cookie cutters into the dough and place cinnamon candies on the gingerbread men for buttons. It was an evening perfect for making Christmas memories, and it taught me something too.

With no kids of my own yet, it's easy for me to just enjoy my role as Auntie Erin, having fun with my girlfriends and their precious angels, primarily at their houses and never before at such a messy endeavor. This time around, it was my place that needed a good scrubbing after they'd all gone home with an assortment of their sweet creations. Though the girls helped me tidy up, the kitchen floor still needed a good mopping to gather the remaining sprinkles and certain items were left hidden by the kids when the thrill of cookie making was lost and games of imagination took over, such as the remote control I finally found well hidden in a seldom used cupboard or the pool ball I discovered days later tucked amongst the gifts under my Christmas tree. The floor needed to be mopped anyway and the misplaced items only made me smile when I found them, but it sure did make me realize what everyone went through when they let me make Christmas cookies at their house when I was little.

Often times, there were a lot more kids, too, and a lot more commotion and I'm sure a lot more mess.

Looking back, I realize how much time and effort my mom, my grandmother and longtime babysitter, and often times surrogate mother, Joyce Boyer spent helping me make my first Christmas cookies. They took the time to make the dough, and had the patience to teach me how to use a rolling pin. They indulged me by letting me help make the various colors of frosting and use far too many sprinkles. They encouraged my creativity from early on and gave me something that is both priceless and irreplaceable: enduring and heart-warming Christmas memories that I will cherish my whole life and continue to make with the ones I love — through my family of friends now, and my own family someday.

So thank you, to all the mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, teachers and caregivers of all sorts who took the time to help a child make a Christmas cookie this holiday season. And if you are still finding royal icing infused with red or green food coloring crusted onto your dining room table in the weeks ahead, know that for all your hard work you will be appreciated — probably not today,

but without a doubt in the years to come when that little boy or girl is all grown up and passes down your love and attention to the next generation. They will think of you as they guide another little set of hands to make gingerbread men and wonder, in amazement, how you managed to do it all.

Erin Stuber is the Columbia Basin Herald,s managing editor, a position she's sure she never could have attained without the love and devotion she received from many wonderful people when she a little girl.