Family Baking Day and a Birthday

Let me start off by saying that since Mindy's been back in town, ALL of our family days actually start the night before! 

The plan was that Saturday would be our family baking day. I will admit, I wasn't looking forward to it as I remember when we used to do it when the girls were little. I just don't have the patience for the mess. Messes are supposed to be outside. Anyway, in order to keep my sanity, when the girls were young, I made the cookies in advance. When I reached my limit with the mess, Butch handled the decorating with the girls. When it comes to chaos, I have a good memory. Somehow, I did hold out hope that this family baking day might be different from what I remember. It wasn't.

We'll back up to Friday night. MIndy had planned to come over after work and spend the night since our baking day was starting at 8:30 a.m. Steph came by after work too---and actually arrived a half hour before Mindy, despite the fact that they work the same hours. Steph just feels free to leave work early now and then. Mindy says she wants her hours. Mindy said that Steph counts her lunch hour differently too. Her hour begins and ends in the restaurant where Mindy's begins and ends when she leaves and returns to her desk.

Steph said that she was meeting Jordan at our house to take her to get her belly button pierced. When she told us where she was taking her, we weren't too thrilled---not exactly located in the best part of town. As Steph said, you don't exactly find tattoo/piercing parlors on our side of town. One thing led to another and we decided to make a family event out of it. Armed with my camera, we all piled in Steph's car and took off. They had a 6 p.m. appointment, but when we got there, a sign on the door said they'd be back in 45 minutes. Steph called---we heard the phone inside. We were getting back in the car when she got a call from the owner saying that they had their wires crossed. Jordan was pretty disappointed and wanted to stop at another place. We didn't think that was such a good idea---the place we were at was supposed to have a good reputation for being clean. You want that in your tattoo parlor!

We came back home. Steph found a place to take Jordan in the Vanderbilt area---safe enough. We stayed home to start our "mindy planned evening." We watched a movie called Inception that turned out to be pretty good.

Saturday morning, I was up at 5:30 to start making cookie dough. I had visions of how smoothly this would go with my advance preparations---mistake #1. I told Steph to bring her cookie sheets and cooling racks---mistake #2. I emptied the lower/storage oven. I figured that using 2 ovens, we'd whip through 7 varieties of cookies in no time flat---mistake #3.

Steph has a reputation for---well, how should I put this nicely---she doesn't have much in the way of cooking skills. But who doesn't have cookie sheets? She arrived with her cooling racks and Pampered Chef 25lb. "stone." These stones are guaranteed NOT to burn cookies, so I get why she has it---she needs ALL the guarantees she can get. But first of all, one doesn't cut it. Secondly, it's so darn heavy and doesn't cool in any kind of quick time, thus making it pretty useless for an entire day of cookie baking. I have 3 cookie sheets, but that's not enough for the number of cookies we were baking. Not off to a good start.

I assigned Mindy the snickerdoodles and Steph the pecan balls---mistake #4. Neither of them know the size of a one-inch ball---and I even gave them a one-inch scoop. By the time they loaded their cookie sheets, we got about a dozen ping pong ball sized cookies. I started the girls and Butch rolling out sugar cookies---mistake #5. Flour was everywhere. 

When the first batch of cookies were on the cooling racks, I assigned Butch the task of rolling the pecan balls in powdered sugar---mistake #6. I turned around to find that he was putting the cookies back on the cookie sheets when he finished rolling them. What the??? He knew we needed those for baking. Now the press cookies wouldn't stick because of the powdered sugar. My edginess was starting to show.

This is getting way too long, so I'm going to cut it shorter. We ended up only making 6 of the types of cookies I had planned. In the middle of all the baking, we let Jordan open presents. Then we got a call from an old friend of Sandy's who was in town for the Garth Brooks charity concert. She had 4 FREE tickets for Tuesday night. We couldn't pass those up. I had to leave the mess to meet her and get the tickets. She wound up in the wrong place, so that ordeal took way longer than we expected. We finally met at the club for Jordan's birthday lunch at 1 p.m. We got back home at 2:30 to the mess you see below. I was too tired to deal with it, so told Mindy to go ahead and leave---I was taking a nap. When I woke up, the cookie fairy had cleaned up the whole kitchen! The least I could do for him was go to the liquor store!

16 Presents for a 16 year old---old idea that I copied from Janet when Jackie and Mindy turned 16. I suggested that Steph do this for Jordan.

The "sketchy" piercing parlor.

Showin' off the goods.

If I was 40 years younger (even 10), I'd do it.

Everything becomes a contest. Butch offered $5.00 to the winner of the best decorated cookie.

Part of the aftermath.

These didn't pass quality control. Butch says he's going to eat them. Yeah, right.