Wednesday, April 17th - cookie-baking and icing party!

Wednesday morning, I woke up thinking "hmm, I want to bake some cookies," and so I made a few dozen sugar cookies and  whipped up some vanilla icing after lunch during our 'break'. Hannah came into the kitchen and she was really excited about (I wasn't quite sure what). She came dashing back in a few minutes later with a plastic bag full of different colors of food coloring, and she wanted to help. I told her to go get the other girls, too, and Judith was there pretty soon, so she and Hannah got to mix whatever colors they liked; and then Faith, Rose Alice, and Winnifred all decorated cookies with us. (Sadly Mallory and Courtney didn't come, I think they were tired from the long day, and they joined us later to eat them!). We saved the girls' beautiful creations up in our room until Bible Study that night, where we had hot cocoa and cookies, and Mal led a discussion about Purity and 1 Timothy 4:12. 

I love the light blue/green color, the dark indigo that Judith made, and of course the pink. -it's so light and fluffy.

<3

We had these two munchkins in there with us, and they (almost) behaved themselves. We've been trying to structure our days with toddlers a little more, so that they have something constructive to do. -and that's all they need. I also like to teach them something, give them a little exercise, and let them help with something interesting or important. They each decorated one cookie, and then -the best part- they go to eat it :). We're finding that they're well-behaved when we're working proactively to keep them occupied, instead of just supervising them doing nothing, and correcting them all the time when they get into trouble. It's not their fault: there really aren't many activities or anything for them to do. And it's hard work making activities for them, but it's worth it for them and for us. for example, yesterday after Prayer and Praise, we took our boys on a nice long walk, gave them their porridge for 'snack time' afterwards, played Follow the Leader and Simon Says, colored special pictures for mom, pushed them on the swings for awhile, fed them lunch, and put them to sleep at naptime. They woke up a little early, so we were still working out, but we let them watch and try our exercise videos. Then we watched and 'I Love Lucy' episode with them, bake banana bread and washed the vegetables for supper, and it was time for them to eat again. So we took them to eat, and then got them ready for bed, and that was the end of the day. :) It went more quickly, and was much more fun and much less stressful than other days, so we're going to try to keep this up. 

Faith 1, Rose Alice, and Hannah working on decorating the cookies. 

We covered them and put them in our room for safe keeping until Bible Study. 

Me and Hannah <3. Judith took this picture with my camera.