Cookie Party!

Today Brian is out of school for Christmas break, but Kendall still has school available–so we decided to do something special for Brian and let him have his best buddy Ty come over for a cookie-baking playdate!  Not gonna lie, this is one of those sorts of holiday activities that I’ve always wanted to try, and have had idyllic fantasies about–but as a somewhat experienced mom at this point, I knew going into it that it would not exactly be the calm, clean, relaxing with carols playing softly sort of activity that I might have dreamed about in my younger days. 😉  However, there’s something to be said for boisterous, messy, fun!  I knew what I was getting into, and and we had a really great time.  But before we get into that..!  First off some photos of Kendall getting ready for school.  I loved that penguin dress so much, I bought it twice. 😉  She has definite opinions about her clothes, particularly her socks!  A preparing-for-epic-cookie-battle shot of my supplies for today..!  Also, some cute things that Brian had seen at the drugstore when he went with Grandma Sue the other day.  He’d kept on talking about these items, so we asked which drugstore, and Brandon went and found them this morning!  Brian was so happy–he had wanted to give Kendall that puppy as a Christmas present, and he just adored that tiny gingerbread house–it’s only about 2″ high!  Brandon was so glad he could find them, and not a moment too soon–they were down to the last puppy and all the other gingerbread houses were broken!

Brian did a little bit of Lego building with some of the parts from his advent calendar while we waited for Ty to arrive.  Soon, Ty did arrive, and came with a present of a cool Monsters Inc. book!  I’d thought ahead and pre-mixed up the dough and had it chilling in the fridge, so we could get straight to the fun parts–and the boys certainly got into it!  Luckily, I remembered to put aprons on them. 😉  They loved spreading out the flour and rolling the dough, and cutting out their shapes.  Of course everyone loves decorating, and I had a lot of various sprinkles and stamps for them to go wild with.  The boys watched a movie while the cookies baked, and I mixed up some colored dough in red and green for extra fun.  I kept some dough back for Kendall to get on on the cookie fun once she got home.  The boys did some more baking and decorating with the red and green, and some of the colorful cookie icing I had picked up.  (Yes, I know, pre-made icing is cheating!  I feel appropriately guilty, my Southern ancestors.  But if you only need a little, it hardly feels worth it to make a whole batch!)  😉  Ty went home with a bagful of cookies, and we still had a ton–plus more to make with Kendall!

Speaking of Kendall, she was so excited to make cookies for real!  She enjoys her toy cookie sets, but this was a whole new level for her.  The colorful dough was fun for her, and she couldn’t wait to get her hands on the rolling pin!  She could hardly reach the counter but she still tried!  A stool to sit on helped her, and she rolled away, with great intensity.  She loved cutting out the shapes too.  Kendall had to go to bed before everything was cool enough to decorate, but Brian stayed up a little longer to do some extra icing work.  He made some really neat icing designs, bulls-eyes and stripes–this bottled icing has some interesting properties, in that different colors can sort of “melt” together and flatten out to become one smooth surface–but the colors don’t run and bleed into each other.  This makes for a pretty cool effect that surprised us both!  Brian made a broken snowflake into an X-wing fighter, and generally had a great time.  We did today’s advent calendar when Brandon came downstairs and enjoyed a cookie or three, and then finally called it a night–which meant I got to clean up from all the day’s excitement.  😉  I found a doorknob covered in frosting and there’ll probably be sprinkles emerging from every crevice until Easter, but even though I was cleaning past 11pm, it was so worth it to give the kids a fun experience.  🙂