Snow Day Baking Marathon

We had our first snow of the year, and boy was it a doozie! Schools canceled, roads closed, newscasters broadcasting from the top of a tractor trailer barreling down the highway- we got one whole inch of snow, people!!! An inch!!! I'm surprised the National Guard wasn't called in.

That being said, I reacted like any good St. Louisan and barricaded myself indoors. It was actually perfect timing because we are having a Christmas party on Sunday and I needed to bake approximately 34,587 cookies. I live under this delusion that I live in a house like this:

when I actually live in a house a little smaller than this one:

so therefore I like to invite everyone I know to my house once a year to take four years off of my life from stress and make all of my guests wildly uncomfortable by forcing them to act like they are having a good time. So I needed some cookies.

The day started off with excitement. Harrison looked out the window, said "Wow! It snowed!...... I don't want to go in it." That's my boy. But he LIED. LIED like a dog. Because we DID go out in it. So unfair. Here was our day:

Penny checking out the blizzard-like conditions.

First we painted. Harrison lasted 3 minutes 25 seconds before losing interest, which is a new record for him. This is not annoying at all, because preparing to paint takes about four minutes. Four minutes of my life I'll never get back again.

Then we danced. Because... I don't know why, my kids like to dance.

Finally, the cookie making commenced. We started in this dinky white bowl with a spoon like a commoner,                         but then I remembered...

my KitchenAid stand mixer!!! It hides in the basement 11 months of the year, only to emerge at Christmas. Some day I'll have a big enough kitchen to have it out all year, and then I will gold plate it an make it the focal point of my home.

Penny was less impressed. As usual, any unknown appliance is assumed extremely loud until proven otherwise.

Aww man, a machine took our job!

And then, randomly, mittens on our feet!

This might have been the funniest thing that ever happened to her.

I'm not sure if they liked the dough...

or the cookie most!

Then...unfortunately...

we had to do this.

Next time I'm standing at the storm door and am going to let Mary Ann go outside with them. 

Does it look like she's having fun? She has been calling the salt Jamie threw out 'snow crumbs', so she was very happy to see the real deal.

A quick cocoa break...

and then back to making cookies! Their job for these was adding the salt to the top of the caramel, so I hope our party guests like sodium!

Our final cookie. H's job on this one was rolling the dough in powdered sugar which he thoroughly enjoyed. He kept saying, 'Thanks for letting me help you mommy!' and he was being serious. Very, very cute.

So that was our snow day/baking extravaganza. Varying levels of fun was had by all!