If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

So this past week had record breaking temperature highs all week.  At it's peak, we hit 117 degrees!  Yep.  In fact, in Tulsa they have been having some concern over the light posts melting- no joke.  Yikes!  So far that family's general response upon hearing this, "Sounds like you moved to Hell!"  Thanks for the support y'all!

So, when it's that hot we don't go out of the house too much.  What did we do instead?  We make cookies!  Everyone says I'm crazy for this, but I only had the oven on for 40 minutes and the activity took all day- and then some!

First we had to make the dough.  Hannah took her rightful place as taste-tester.

This was her first beater....awwww.

Nathan was quick to join the taste testing team!

She is a harsh critic- not gonna give me a smile until she's sure it's perfect.

But she had a lot to report once she made up her mind!

Nathan was much easier to please.  Or could it be that I let him lick the spoon...?

Once the dough had been made it had to chill for a while, so... after nap time it was finally time to roll out the dough and make shapes! 

I used this as an opportunity to practice letters and words with Nathan.  He knocked my socks off with how many words he could spell!

He never performs very well if he knows I'm filming him, so I tried to sneak one in... sorry for the quietness of the video!  He starts by singing a song he made up about cookies and works through sounding out the word cat.

Here he is making CAT.

After the shapes had been made and cooked it was time to decorate them!

We used some paint brushes we got at the dollar store and painted up our cookies, then sprinkled them with goodies!

Nathan did several all by himself!

Here are a few of the early results.  Beauties, eh? And they even taste good!  I'm a big fan of this recipe...one of the first times I have been able to tell post-baking what the shapes are!  

However, we ran out of icing before we could get to the letters- so we have saved some of the fun for another day!

This week is Jeremy's birthday.  He turns 28 on Wednesday, and we have a special surprise planned for him this weekend.  Stay tuned for the details!