Cookie Team

Today Garrett helped me bake cookies. We love to make cookies, in part because we both love to eat cookies. But today one of the batches we were making was sugar cookies. This is a big deal because I have never successfully made sugar cookies--until today!!! I am really so proud of myself! Garrett had fun with it too. He chastised me for making a mess--I always make a mess while baking but today was especially bad. When I cracked an egg I somehow missed the bowl and the egg went all over the counter. He said, in his most stern voice, "Mom, that was not a very good choice. What a mess! Don't you know Santa is watching you? You're not being very good. You better try harder to be gooder if you want presents." We really haven't even played the "Santa card" very much this year--we were thinking we should be using that more, but apparently he's got the concept. Later, as I was forcing my Kitchenaid to mix more dough than was realistic, it rebelled by spraying flour all over the floor. This time he shook his head and said, "Mom, don't you know you're not supposed make your fast spinner machine blow up all over? Dad's not going to be happy when he sees your mess." I assured him that dad is used to this kind of mess and we have a deal: I bake; he cleans up! (Hopefully Garrett will get this concept too!) When it was time to cut out the sugar cookies, Garrett was insistent on using the Gingerbread Man cookie cutter. He didn't even want to consider any other shapes so that is the only one we used. I had set the dough we had cut out aside until the one of the cookie sheets was ready. When Garrett saw me set down the empty tray, he said, "Ok mom, this team of guys is ready to get hot!" Suddenly our little men turned into a football team in my mind and I felt so bad every time I broke one of them.

Notice the "injured reserve" plate of guys. In case you're wondering, Jeff is leading us in a fabulous rendition of "Jingle Bells" complete with bells.