::the rest of halloween::

Last sunday was so nice. Our chapel is being remodeled, so for now the sunday school hour is eliminated. Church was only two hours and it started at 10AM instead of 11AM. So after church we felt like we had all day long to do stuff.

We always make delicious fabulous halloween sugar cookies every year--sometime around halloween. Sometimes after. So we went to work making those. And while we were doing that Kris and Max started working on Jack'O'Laterns.
Lots of pictures:



Are those TEETH or what?! He looks a little like a snaggle-toothed pumpkin face himself.


Lots 'o guts in those big pumpkins. Can't you just smell the slimy smell?

Not sure if Kris is giving commands or about to sneeze here.

Max picked out a very cool pumpkin, and luckily for him it wasn't especially hard to carve. I was afraid it would be for sure.



Yes, Kris is making the best pumpkin ever.

And my work. It was a ton of cookies becuase we gave some away. I got pretty tired by the end.


Sandy was sleeping for most of our escapades, but eventually he woke up and was HUNGRY as usual. He wanted cookies. Instead he got cheerios.


Cheerios and water. Mmmmmmm.
More of my finished product:

And some of the boys' finished products:

All of them:

Sandy's on the far right--Kris made it. Awesome, right?
Mine is next. Kris cleaned it for me and I carved the face.
Then Kris's of course. Love it!
Max's is on the far right but you can't see it in the picture. It was almost impossible to get a candle to work in there because the gourd was so short!
So here's a photo of the huge candle from my pumpkin trying to light up his adorable one.

And there you go. That was the rest of our halloween--besides the eating dozens of cookies and lots of candy part.
We were pretty proud of ourselves for getting it all done. Happy Halloween!

::a twist on tradition::

For the last four years Max & I have made delicious halloween sugar cookies. And then I always blog about it. Of course.
So after making it a tradition, and cooking them in four different kitchens in four different houses, we certainly couldn't miss a year just because we're tired and busy!
I was planning on making the cookies over halloween weekend--in fact I made the dough and refrigerated it on saturday. It was while doing that I realized that we had been infiltrated by a yucky fat mouse (which of course didn't help with the workload of the weekend.)
I was planning on finishing up the cookies sunday afternoon, but one of the families that we're good friends with in the ward invited us over for pumpkin pie. Who would refuse something awesome like that?
Come monday the dough was still in the fridge, and there were no delicious cookies to be seen.

We didn't give up. We modified the tradition. This weekend we got out the fall cookie cutters and made leaves, acorns and pumpkins instead of ghosts, cats & jack-o-lanterns.

Good thing I bought those leaf cookie cutters last year, that's all I can say! (Even though Kris thought one of the shapes was a christmas tree, silly boy.)

And we set to work.

It was a fun sunday afternoon activity for the family. This is the first time that Kris got to be involved, yay!

I was about 1000 degrees when we got finished, and I was exhausted. It was worth it though. They're delicious.
Max was my decorating helper again, of course. And somehow he managed to spill exponentially less sprinkles everywhere than even last time. It's nice that he's getting more coordinated--he doesn't listen much better, but he's at least got more hand dexterity!
It is funny to compare now with the first time we did it though--in 2006 I guess. He was only two and it was quite the undertaking to make the cookies together. He's much more capable now of course, and most of the time much more fun to hang out with.

It's fun to have traditions that let us see how time has passed and how fast little ones grow. And traditions that are tasty too. Yum.

::halloween tradition::

Max and I made a batch of halloween sugar cookies for the first time four years ago, in our first house in Kansas City.  It was a bit of an ordeal, making cookies with a two year old, and I just wasn't that good at cooking back then (I'm only slightly better now.)
But they turned out so delicious and cute that we had to do it again next year. Or maybe it was the fact that Sultan ate most of the cookies that year--we accidentally left him in the house and the cookies on the counter when we went to deliver some to friends. We needed to make up for that.

So we've made cookies for the last four years, and the crazy thing, in four different kitchens. You think that sounds like too much moving? Why yes, yes it is.

So we made our traditional batch this week. I added a few new cookie cutters last year taking advantage of after holiday sales. It was fun to get to use them. Max's new favorite is the ghost.

I like him because he only requires white frosting, yay.

Max is getting better at helping--at least he doesn't just spill all the cookie cutters on the floor and roll them around in the flour like he did the first year.
He's my decorator now. Last year we got M&Ms and candy corn and he made faces on all the pumpkins. I wish I would've done that this year, instead we just did the standard sprinkles and such. But it was still fun. I only had to yell at Max 10 or 12 times for dumping the whole tube of sprinkles on one cookie.

Fun to make with my Max, but even more fun to eat. Which is what Kris thought when he came home from work to a kitchen full of delicious cookies! Mmmmmm.