changing with the times

I love family traditions. And I especially love them when they have to do with food.

On Christmas morning for as long as I can remember, us kids would wake up early and sit at the top of the stairs till my parents gave us the okay, then they’d video tape us coming down the stairs, then we’d open presents one at a time from youngest to oldest and finally take a break for Christmas breakfast which was always: cinnamon rolls!

Even my last 2 married Christmases, when we came home for Christmas, we all still rolled out the dough, piled it high with cinnamon, sugar and butter, rolled it up and ate our traditional Christmas breakfast.

But not this year. This year was different for a bunch of reasons. Since Christmas was on a Sunday, my dad was at church all morning, so we couldn’t do our traditional Christmas morning on Christmas morning. My brother and his wife of 2 months were with her family in Colorado and my other brother and his wife of 6 months were at her family’s house for the morning. So, those of us who were home opened gifts on Christmas Eve afternoon, and then ate pancakes instead of cinnamon rolls. It was different and it was wonderful. Traditions are great, but making new ones is also great. As life changes, we change along with it.

Even though we’re changing along with the times, I still wanted cinnamon rolls. So on the day after Christmas, I made this cinnamon sugar pull apart bread from Joy the Baker.

Normally, I hate baking. Especially when there are pictures of how you’re supposed to do it. I just don’t like measuring and being precise. I get angry when my food doesn’t look exactly like the pictures. And I hate waiting 30-60 minutes to taste what I made while it bakes in the oven.

But on December 26th, everything was going along perfectly. My pictures looked exactly like hers and I was feeling pretty good about my baking skills.

After the dough rose, I put it in the oven and here’s Joy the Baker’s picture of what it’s supposed to look like: {isn’t it pretty?!}

Welp. Here’s what mine looked like:

An explosion. Not dainty little strips of cinnamon and sugar, but a wild explosion. But I guess you can’t really go wrong when it comes to cinnamon, sugar, butter and bread. It can be a traditional cinnamon roll, lovely little strips or huge puffed up squares, but it all tastes A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. And I was pretty happy with my next picture which kinda looks like Joy the Baker’s.

{click here for the recipe}

And here’s a picture of us on Christmas Eve. Like my red flower headband?! I made it myself and it was soooo easy! {wanna make one too? click here for directions} Like Davey’s hair? This was before he spiked it 🙂

Cheers to change and to a New Year!

p.s. We’re moving on Jan 1st.

p.p.s. But we don’t know where. Stay tuned…