Who Says Cookie Making Is Reserved For Christmas?

It was a rainy weekend. It followed a rainy week. We had planned to spend our Sunday downtown looking at all of the art from ArtPrize. ArtPrize is a competition that is currently happening in Downtown Grand Rapids where amazing artists from all over the place have created art and it is displayed all over the city.

There has been some amazing stuff, including a replica of the loch ness monster placed into the Grand River in the middle of the city. We tried last weekend to go see all of the art, but the thousands of people flooding the city made it next to impossible, so we gave up. Our favorite (and one of the only we've actually seen) is a mosaic mural on the side of the children's museum.






So we planned to go see all of the art on Sunday this week, but it was so cold and windy that we spent pretty much the entire weekend in the house. I did take Noah to pick out a Halloween costume and I'll be taking Aaron this morning, as soon as I get my booty off the computer and get downstairs to exercise.

While Noah and I were shopping for costumes, he saw some Halloween cookie cutters that we just HAD to have, so we decided to make Halloween cookies. With my new kitchen table (sale at Kmart) it was so much easier than before. Our old table had a ton of decorative bumps that icky gunk was always getting stuck in, plus a lot of the grooves had become flaking wood. Not exactly the most sanitary, or safe to roll out dough on.

So since I had my nice new table, since we had the cookie cutters, since we had absolutely NOTHING to do for the day, we went for It.

I started out just having the kids cut the shapes out.












But Noah really wanted to try his hand at rolling out the dough and I figured there was probably no reason to say no. He actually did a pretty good job with it.










While the cookies were baking, Steve took the boys downstairs for good old fashioned rough housing (boys will be boys) and when I called them back up to decorate, both boys were happily displaying bare skin chests. Which actually served well for getting frosting all over anyway.

They did all of their own spreading


















And decorating with icing














And for the first EVER, we actually have pictures of Daddy decorating cookies with us. Up until now, we have always done this activity while Daddy was gone, and I was so excited to have Daddy participating this year.

This is just the beginning though. Usually he gets out of decorating the Christmas tree with us. Not this year. I am insisting on a real tree this year, as well as full family participation in the decorating process. It should make for a fun post in a couple of months.



This weekend also had another bell performance that went well and I managed to secure a babysitter for Black Friday, which also makes me very happy. There are a couple things on the kids' lists that I will need big sales to be able to afford. I also made the decision to let Aaron have a Chuck E Cheese birthday party in a few weeks.

I have to apologize for the lack of posts lately. I have been trying to stick with my rule about only posting if I have something interesting to say. But I am also finding that I am missing sharing my thoughts in witting. It seems that with exercising in the morning, and then getting ready for the day, by the time I have a chance to sit down at the computer after dropping Aaron off for school, I look around the house and find twenty other things that need to be done. This week I also have some work to get done to get the house ready for an extended family visit next weekend. I also am volunteering in Aaron's kindergarten class on Tuesdays now and I will be driving for a field trip for Noah this week.

Tomorrow I will share with you an experiment I tried yesterday morning before church. It worked but I'm not sure that it can last. I'll leave you in suspense...

Have a good Monday.