Bread Day

I have very fond memories of going to my Aunt Sue's house at Christmas time with all of my cousins for bread day. Aunt Sue would have loaves of fresh Greek bread dough waiting for us to turn into festive holiday creations. We would mold Santas, Christmas trees, teddy bears along with all sorts of other masterpieces out of the dough. While we were waiting for our Greek bread loaves to rise, Sue would bring out loaves of sweet roll dough for all of us to make a batch of home made sweet rolls to have for breakfast of Christmas morning. Then while all the bread was baking, we would all go swimming in Sue and Doug's indoor swimming pool.

I loved this Christmas tradition I had with my mom's side of the family and looked forward to it every year. The family grew and grew and it was fun to share this unique tradition with the next generation, eventually there was too many of us so now we do this fun tradition with just our immediate family and all the grandkids love it!

My dad is the master baker in the family, he knows how to get the dough to rise just right, so he kindly makes all the dough for us. We began with the Greek bread. The kids love the feel of the dough squish between their fingers, so the kneading stage lasts quite a while.

Thomas' favorite thing in the world right now is snakes, he adores those slithery creatures. So Andrew was nice enough to help Thomas' dream of making a candy cane snake come true.

This is Vienne's new silly face, she loves showing it off

While Andrew was busy attempting to dye bread dough red, the little boys were having a blast "rolling" out the rest of the snake.

The finished product! It actually turned out super cute!

Will made an awesome and very detailed Santa face

James and Karin made an adorable chubby bear. James is known as the Honey Bear in his family

V didn't love the feel of the dough and chose to have a nap instead. So Bethy made a red panda to surprise V when she woke up, panda's are currently one of Viennes favorite animals right now.

After we had all created our Greek bread dough masterpieces, it was time to move on to the sweet rolls! This is always my favorite part. Will got the envied privilege to punch the dough down after it had been rising in the oven for hours.

Some of the kiddos were a little tuckered out, so my mom, as always, had a craft set up for them to do. She helped them make the most adorable little pine cone elves.

This year we wondered what crushed up candy canes would taste like rolled up in the sweet rolls. Thomas was very happy to volunteer to smash the canes into tiny bits.

James was very into making the rolls. He carefully sprinkled the cinnamon and sugar all over the buttered dough. his rolls tasted the best by far since they had the most cinnamon and sugar in them.

When we had finished making all the rolls and the pans were waiting for their turn in the oven, mom brought out some Christmas cookies from our favorite bakery downtown, Baker's.

While we enjoyed our christmas cookies, we took quizzes to find out which Pokemon we are. We have quite a few Pokemon go fanatics in the fam, so it was a big deal to find out which one we all were.

V's favorite Christmas song is Carol of the Bells, she can not keep her lil hips still whenever that song comes on. So she put on a little dance recital for all of us to the classic Mannheim Steamroller version of her favorite carol.

The bread all came out of the oven golden brown and perfect. We always share one loaf right out of the oven, it would be so unfair to smell that delicious bread cooking all day and not have a piece! We save the rest of the bread for breakfast on Christmas morning.