Working Together

 Yesterday we made cookies.  Normally, I prefer to bake by myself, or with only one child.  But I've been sick and weak, so yesterday I announced that we would be baking cookies as a family.  For the little people, it was an adventure!  For the big person(Steve), it was an exercise in patience(and frustration).  But the cookie making went quite quickly with me mixing up the very simple dough and the rest of them loading up the trays.  I ended up getting frustrated as certain of my baking sheets don't cook as well at lower temperatures( 325 F).  Thankfully most of the cookies turned out beautifully and my wonderful husband finished off baking the cookies so I could head out to Bag Ladies.

 It's the end of the week and the end of the month so our grocery list was getting longer.  Our fridge isn't empty, but was missing some very important items such as milk.  We do have non-dairy creamer, so running out of milk doesn't rule out drinking coffee, but I discovered that it is essential when eating the very hot leftover chicken wings.  Coffee does not work in any form or fashion to cool down the burning sensation in my mouth.  My mother's homemade soup did though...

 It's been a busy week and I haven't been well.  I wasn't able to go grocery shopping during the day today and the weekend is packed full of activities.  I also wanted to have a family date.  So we combined the two.  At my children's request we ate at the food court and then hit the attached grocery store.  The food court tends to be a win-win as my boys can eat hamburgers and I can eat both a cheesy gordita crunch and tabbouleh in the same meal.  ( My husband shudders that I would combine dubious fast food and amazing ethnic food in the same meal, but hey...diversity is beautiful!).

 After our meal, we headed to the grocery store.  We had to walk all the way through the grocery store to get our carts. There was a slight bit of drama here as one boy accidentally pinched the hand of the other boy while getting the carts, but finally we were ready.  I had divided the list into two parts, divided us into two teams each headed by an adult and the children picked which team they wanted.  Not surprisingly, it ended up being divided by gender.  After a brief discussion, we were off, the goal being to be the first team back at a designated area with all the items on our list.  Daddy's team won, but not by much.  Had I not gotten turned around and had to dodge several staff pushing loaded carts, my team might have won.  Unfortunately, by that point, I had started to get edgy and anxious, but we completed the grocery shopping much quicker than it would have taken me on my own and with a lot more fun.  I think we may to play the grocery store game again. :)

 Now to convince my children that cleaning is fun.  Or at least to get them to do it properly. :)

P.S I made two batches of pumpkin cloud cookies.  These are some seriously good cookies.  One batch was made with raisins and the other with chocolate chips.  They're both incredible!