We gathered on Friday with my cousins, Michael and Gina Maguire (my dad’s sister’s kids) to do our annual cousins cook-a-thon.

Holiday treats were on the docket: Russian chocolate cookies, peanut butter balls and knots.

Everything turned out great. It’s funny when you make something once a year how you have to re-learn how to make it each time.

But we’re getting better.

This year Michael suggested we try our hand at homemade ravioli and have that for dinner while we bake. I ended up doing the ravioli that afternoon with mixed results. The stuffing tasted fine but the pasta was just too thick. I joked with Vickey’s family when they came that if they ate a whole ravioli they’d have their pasta quota for the month.

It was fun to get together and razz each other as only cousins can.

Michael and Gina gave us a gift bucket of popcorn snacks. Now the kids have a popcorn bucket for movie watching popcorn, one of their favorite activities and snacks.

One of the night’s entertaining moments came when Gina thought she could turn white chocolate red by using rose colored food coloring, thinking the more she used the more red it would get…not the case. Needless to say we had rose food coloring everywhere (just cleaned some off the white freezer door today). Mike even managed to get it all over his hands and face. It was difficult to contain the laughter looking at his rosy forehead. Plus it was getting late and we were punchy.

Till next year, cousins!

Here are a few photos from the evening…

Eliana in her dress-ups, showing off for Michael and Gina.

Here’s a picture that includes Tank being his obnoxious self, caught in the shovel nose act.

And the three of us hard at work.