Our daughter and family used to live 112 miles away from us and as of the beginning of August are now 1,543 miles away.  In Colorado.  The twins started first grade on August 10 so they had to get there before school began.  They packed their van and other car pulling a small trailer with the three kids, two dogs, inflatable beds, two folding beds, enough clothes for two weeks, a couple of pots and pans, some relatively “instant” meals, and 15-20 cases of wine.  (The moving company wouldn’t move the wine.)  They arrived at their new home three days later.

Anyway, the movers weren’t coming until the 10th to pack up all the rest of their stuff and by then, they would be at their new house.  So I volunteered to go to their old house and stay while the movers packed and loaded everything.  It took two days to pack and two days to load the truck.  It’s not that they had tons of stuff that took two days to load the moving van but that the last two miles to their house was a very narrow and twisty road.  The moving van driver didn’t want to chance driving on that road so the movers packed a smaller trunk and unloaded it into the larger van that was two miles away.  And that took more time.  And four trips of handling all the packed boxed twice.

I got tired just watching them.  The moving van arrived two weeks later in Denver and they could unpack, cook, clean, and get back to normal.

Enough with the movers.  On to the bakers.

Personally have not experienced baking at a higher altitude than 675 feet above sea level.  And they don’t call Denver the “Mile High City” for nothing.

My daughter tried to bake some brownies last week and was not successful.  I felt sorry for her and decided to bake cookies for her and the kids to decorate.  Because what’s Christmas without decorated cut-out cookies?

Along with stars, trees, wreaths, mittens and candy cane shaped cookies, I also made peanut butter, peanut butter blossom, and white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, and pumpkin bread, too.

In the box was a can of powdered Royal icing mix and some squeeze bottles to decorate the cut out cookies.

This is the only picture I took before packing it all up and mailing it to Colorado.  Maybe I’ll get some pictures of the decorated cookies….

And if you have some high altitude baking tips or recipes to pass along, I know some people who would appreciate it.