Baking 101 - use a recipe!

Ah, Saturday morning...got to sleep an extra two hours (pretty nice!). Then I got to hang out in bed with LuLu on one side and Big Butter on the other both competing to see just who could be the silliest. Pretty good way to start my day. My pace quickly changed, however as I realized I had just under an hour to get myself and the kids ready and out the door for a big PJ party to meet their new teachers at church. Seems simple enough, especially since they didn't need to get dressed or eat breakfast (or did they? I wasn't too sure, so I threw a few waffles in the toaster just in case!) As I got out of the shower, I heard LuLu reading stories to Baby Butter in his crib. Now how sweet and thoughtful is that?! As I hurried to get ready, the kids started to have a bit of a field day in the family room and kitchen. (I probably should have just turned on the TV at this point, but I'm trying to keep that thing off and let them be creative and play and learn how to get along and...they end up doing crazy things like this!) LuLu decided she wanted to make cookies. Yep, at 8:07am on a Saturday, she's in the kitchen pouring milk into a cup, then into a big bowl. She adds some flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and some raisins. She then attempted to place spoonfuls of this incredibly thin and runny "soup" onto a cookie sheet... So at this point, we needed to have already been in the car. I'm finally ready, but the kids are definitely not! Baby butter has emptied my gigantic bag of animal crackers all over the pantry, and a bag of pretzel crackers (have ya tried those - they are SO good!) have been scattered all over the kitchen floor. Big Butter has gotten himself dressed (normally a good thing, but not so much on PJ day!) in sweatpants and 5 shirts, and is playing on the computer. "Time to go!" Yeah, whatever, no one seems to hear me! Well, to sum things up, I promised LuLu we'd finish the "cookies" when we got back, and somehow we all got in the car and got there only 15 minutes late! The party was really fun and they had a great time (including breakfast - good thing, since no one ate their waffles!) So we got back and LuLu goes to bake her cookies, needless to say, she didn't have much luck! I SO did not want to hurt her feelings, because she had worked so hard on it and was truly convinced she could actually bake them! So I asked her to smell it - EWWWW!!! And that's all it took - she was a good sport about it and we both laughed as we thought about just how nasty those things would be! She then decided that yes, it would be ok to bake some brownies (from a mix, following the directions!) instead! Thank goodness! So she did...completely by herself...and they were so good...sprinkles and all!

Mixing it all up!

Making sure it actually tastes as good as it smells!

Ta-Da!

And by bed-time they were almost all gone...

Proving once again, that sometimes Mom's ideas aren't all that bad!