Christmas Cookies

I had two sous-chefs join me in the kitchen for this year's sugar cookie event. Whenever Evelyn is on her stool, helping me cook or bake at the kitchen counter, Julia insists on joining us. Since Troy was gone this afternoon, he wouldn't be able to see the mess that evolves from baking cookies with a 5-year-old and a 19-month-old. I found an extra stool for Julia to stand on, put on a little Mannheim Steamroller music and let the good times roll!
Evelyn used the regular-sized rolling pin to roll out the cookie dough, and Julia used her pint-sized rolling pin to push flour around the counter (and onto the floor). By the expressions on their faces in the picture below, you can totally tell who's in it to make cookies and who's there to have a good time.

As we began to accumulate scraps of dough, we tossed them over to Julia. She has the right idea - press the dough out with your hands first, then roll with the rolling pin. I don't think she ate too much cookie dough in the process . . .

After Julia got started with the rolling pin and the (Julia-sized) spatula, she was having so much fun that she didn't even think about using the cookie cutters. That was fine, though, because Evelyn was strictly business, trying to get as many cookies from the dough as possible. However, with both of my helpers this year, I only managed to make 23 cookies (whereas I usually come out with 30), but that's fine. True, we wanted sugar cookies to eat, but I also wanted the girls to have fun. Mission accomplished on both fronts! (And Troy was none the wiser about the mess . . . it was all cleaned up by the time he got home.)