Valentines Cookies

It seams every holiday or important event in our house these days is anticipated with such excitment. I shouldn't have been surprised when Mikayla showed up in our bedroom at 4:30 on Valentines morning. Ugh. No rest for the momma.
Daddy had to go to site that morning as well, so we had an early morning card exchange and let the munchkins eat copious amounts of sugar for breakfast!
And in keeping with the sugary theme of the morning we made DE-LISH-US Valentines cookies for Mika to take to school, and of course for our own consumption as well. I was not happy with the usual sugar cookie recipe I had been using for a number of years, so I decided to go on-line and find something new. Fortunately it paid off this time, the new recipe was by far superior to my (now deceased) old recipe.

I also decided to change things up by icing the cookies with a butter-cream instead of my usual royal icing, this too was a change in the right direction.
Baking with 3 "helpers" is always, umm, interesting? There is more often than not a fight over who is pouring in an ingredient, or who's turn it is to mix, who is taking someone's spot on the step stool, and so-on...

This baking session went relatively smoothly, although I did have to force everyone downstairs at one point for me to just get things done. (Thank you TV and/or Wii for your babysitting services). All in all a successful morning of baking, and 2 dozen beautiful cookies sent to school.

The baking continued in the afternoon with only Gavin and myself, what a treat to have just one little set of fingers to keep away from snatching the cookie dough.