The Best Things in Life are Sweet

The best things in life are sweet. 

Freshly baked cinnamon rolls are paired with a cup of local Cutters Point coffee while I watch the seagulls drift by in the morning sun.

It doesn’t get much sweeter than that, does it?

The recipe for these cinnamon rolls was passed down to me by my mother in law the first Christmas I started dating her son 42 years ago.

The page for this recipe is dog eared and stained from decades of reference for breakfasts on Thanksgiving and Easter breakfasts and occasional treats in-between

And now, when the kids call a few days before a visit home, they ask,

Mom, can you make cinnamon rolls?

I love how savoring these freshly baked rolls early in the morning has become a tradition.

The night before I prepare the yeast dough and let it rise over night, then sprinkle and roll up the dough so the kids come downstairs to the smell of cinnamon

They fight over who gets to frost the rolls with homemade buttercream frosting and who gets the gooiest middle piece.

This tradition, first passed down from my husband’s mother to me is now passing on to my sons and their wives. 

When they ask me for the recipe, I share a photo of the original page their grandmother first passed on to me.

We are creatures that crave tradition…the passing on, the sharing, the community that comes from repeating a shared experience. The warmth of family and breaking fresh bread. The joy that comes as a mother of passing on these experiences to the next generation.

God is a generational God. Repeatedly he identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Three generations. There is something solid and grounding about identifying his presence

This recipe has been passed on for three generations.

It is rooted in the traditions of our family.

A visual reminder of the prayer embedded in my heart for our children and their families:

For this reason I kneel before the Father,  from whom every family] in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,  may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,  and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 

Ephesians 3:14-19