Fun Day With Friends

While Jason and Troy were away at work, Heather and I were a little depressed that it was going to be a "regular" Saturday...you know, the non-December Fun kind of Saturday. The husbands don't want to miss any big fun, and we wanted to create some small fun that they would be OK missing. So we decided to head over to our favorite lunch stop and who should we see? This guy...

That's right...we are at the world's greatest fast food restaurant LIVE with their mascot dressed as Santa. To my 3 year olds, life does not get much better than "Santa Cow." Rylan declared that he was going to make the Santa Cow extra happy by eating all of his chicken! After our lunch date with Macy and Reid we went back to our house to do a little Christmas-y baking. Reid and Jacob were totally into swords, basketballs and rolling on the ground together. Macy and Rylan were totally into baking our gingerbread men and worked together wonderfully in the kitchen.
After mixing the dough, they rolled it and started cutting out the little g-men.
And Macy put them into the oven. We were careful not to peek for fear of one popping out at us!!!
For batch number 2, Jacob was ready to get his fingers dirty. He did a super job rolling more dough.
After they FINALLY cooled, the decorating began. It was simple - white icing and red hots, but to our kids it was perfect.
Even the 13 year old liked this part! :)
And to think all this fun started with this...
San*dra L* ee would be proud! In fact, opening the package made me have another great realization... Sometimes I get so caught up in things being "just so" or "from sctatch" that I miss the whole meaning. Today, a simple mix brought loads of fun and joy to 4 kids and even though it was kind of thrown together this morning, the point of making a memory happened and the kids did not care that the moms did not slave over the plans for hours. So I encourage you, just have fun and don't get caught up in being "perfect." (By the way, I'm mostly talking to myself!)

On another note - Heather always kids me because I have a Kit8chenAid mixer that is a decoration on my counter. When I bake cookies, I always mix by hand and don't use the mixer. What do you do? Am I the only mix with a spoon girl left? These were made with both the mixer and the spoon and I have to say, the mixer was quite quicker! :)