Meeting Anna and Baking Cookies

I met my good friend, Christa, in 1996 while working at Friendship Force International, a cultural exchange program for adults. Christa was a volunteer Club President for The Friendship Force of Norderstedt, Germany at the time and eventually became a Board Member. Over the years, we built a unique friendship that I cherish very much. She made the trip to Atlanta for our wedding in 2004 and I was so honored and proud that she was there. Part of the uniqueness of our friendship is the difference in our ages. I won't divulge her age or mine, but there are 40 years between us. I appreciate the wisdom and perspective she brings to our friendship...and she is quite fun to be around!

For our wedding she gave us the most beautfiul silver salt shaker and promised the matching pepper shaker when we had our first child. Yesterday I met her neice, who happened to be in Atlanta visiting her boyfriend who is a guest of CNN for 3 weeks. Anna served as "courier" for my gift and it was a pure delight to meet her. Over the years I have heard so much about Anna from Christa and I've even been to Anna's parents' house in Kiel, Germany. It was really nice to put a face with a name. We met at the mall for lunch and she took right to John David and he to her. They were big buds for our entire visit and he protested leaving the mall until he found out that Anna was going in our car with us. I gave her a lift to the Martin Luther King Memorial Center so that she could continue her touristic visit of Atlanta and John David fell asleep in the car before she could tell him good-bye. He woke up when we pulled into our drive way at home and immediately checked the front seat for Anna. When he realized she wasn't there or anywhere to be found, his little heart was broken. He cried big tears for her. It was so sweet but really sad too!

The outpour of emotion lasted for a little while until I got him interested in baking cookies with me. "Co-kers" as John David called them, a mixture of the words crackers and cookies. So here are some pictures from our first ever baking adventure.



I think he enjoyed eating the decorations the most. I went to take the other pan of cookies out of the oven and came back to catch him doing this: