My Annual Visit to the Fifth Circle of Dante's Inferno

Here is a dirty little secret of mine - I HATE cooking with my kids.  They get in my way, and my kitchen is too tiny to fit me, plus two kids and the chairs they need to be tall enough to "help."  "Help," meaning spilling sugar all over the place, fighting over whose turn it is to pour an ingredient into the bowl, etc. 

I especially hate making sugar cookies with them.  Because then you have the whole cutting-of-the-shapes issue.  "Mo-om, Micah isn't letting me cut enough shapes!"  "Mo-om!  Sadie put her shape in the middle, and now no other shapes fit!"

It makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out.

Then you have to decorate the cookies.  Which means a royal mess.  I'm not sure when they'll ever understand not to smoosh the top of the sprinkles right onto the frosting - that it clogs the little holes the sprinkles come out from.  Ugh.

Yet I do it every year at Valentine's Day.  Because my kids love it.  This is a testament to how much I love my kids.  Someone can say this about me at my funeral, okay?  "She loved her kids enough to make sugar cookies with them."

I decided we should just get the torture over with, and I had some time yesterday, so we made some.  After I dealt with the mixing, rolling, shape-cutting, and baking with the kids all up in my grill, I was DONE. I asked Ben to decorate the cookies with the kids while I held our miserably ill Gagey.  He just wanted to be snuggled.  Which is my pleasure.

Dylan actually took all of these pictures. The kid has photography skillz.

Notice Sadie smooshing the top of the sprinkle shaker right onto the cookie.  Grrr:

 And then Ben took a picture of Dyl:

Last night, I was kind of cleaning up to go to bed, and I noticed that half of the cookies hadn't been frosted.  Talk about adding insult to injury.  So, at midnight, I sat and finished icing and sprinkling the dang things.