Why do I keep doing this to myself?

Orchestrating the making and decorating of sugar cookies, I mean. I do it at Christmas time, and I do it at Valentine's time. It's always a huge mess, and it always makes me want to shoot all of my children, and then myself.

I think the main problem is this: I want to eat sugar cookies. So I have to make them. And then the kids are all, "We want to help!" And I keep thinking, "This will be a great time to bond with them, teach them how to cook, make some Christmas memories, etc." So then we do it, and I hate it the whole time.

I'm a glutton for punishment.

So. I hadn't had time to make much of my annual neighbor gifts - my poppyseed bread. So I thought, maybe we can just double our batch of sugar cookies and give some cookies to a few neighbors. Um, we found out that two batches equals about 124 cookies. Dylan actually counted them all.

The kids fought over who got to help mom make the dough. Then they fought over who got to roll the dough out. Then they fought over whose turn it was to cut out the shapes. It was special.

And no matter how many times I told them to make sure they got the edges of the dough with their cookie cutters, they never did. Which resulted in much extra rolling of dough.

I had enough by the time we baked all the cookies. I decided that we should frost them the next day.

The next day's frosting started out okay. I got Mikey started:

The other two were doing really well by themselves.

I needed a break from the kiddos, and I also needed to shower, so I decided to let them go at it while I showered really quick.

Big mistake.

When I came out, there were mounds of sprinkles all over the floor, table, chairs, etc. I couldn't walk around without walking in sprinkles of some sort. I swept and wiped up, but no matter how much I swept and wiped, the dang sprinkles WOULDN'T GO AWAY. In between my toes. Underneath my fingernails. ARGHHH!!!

The kids had only decorated like 10 cookies. I decided that was good enough, and I discarded the remaining 114 cookies. Threw them right in the trash. Disposaled the frosting immediately. They weren't upset with me - by then, they had already lost interest, of course. They were already in the freakin' living room, watching some show on TV, when I came out of the shower. (I'm the one that usually frosts the remaining 114 cookies.)

But then I regretted my decision, after I ate like 8 of the 10 decorated cookies. I wanted more. So I re-visited cookie land a couple of weeks after Christmas. This time, I tried to be patient with the kids. And I didn't leave them alone for one second. And I had Sadie and Dylan decorate them while Micah was asleep.

It felt weird to do Christmas-themed cookies again, so we opted for really-early valentines shapes:

And then I made some baby bootie shapes for my friend, Kim, who just had a baby. I used my stocking cookie cutters, and just cut off the tops. And then added little baby laces with some frosting tubes I inherited from my mom.

So yeah. I also inherited Easter-themed cookie cutters from my mom, so I think I'll make some Easter ones. Just so's I can eat 'em. The urge for sugar cookie goodness outweighs the potential frustration in dealing with the kids. :)