One of my fondest memories is of my mother baking cookies with my then 2 year old daughter. They mixed dough from a recipe my Mom knew by heart. As I watched them roll out the dough and cut out the cookies it felt almost like a Norman Rockwell moment. My daughter kneeded her dough, rolled it out, and cut out her shapes. The more she worked the blacker the dough became. I was a little concerned that anyone would eat those cookies. My mother just smiled and sent my little one off to wash her hands in the bathroom. As my litle sweetie turned the corner mom wisked away the dirty cookie tray and replaced it with fresh clean cookies she had cut out and popped them in the oven. The tray my daughter had made was never to be seen again. When the cookies came out of the oven, my daughter was none the wiser and we had wonderful cookies. It all looked so smart and easy. And, beacuse I was expecting our second child any day, watching this wonderful exchange between my mother and daughter gave me chance to relax a little.

Jump forward a number of years. I am now the grandmother of two wonderful children, a girl who just turned four and a boy who is two. The memory of my mother baking with her grandchild is still so sweet that I decided to bake cookies with my grandchildren. I can not pull a sugar cookie recipe from my memory so I did what any modern day grandmother would do. I went to the internet. After a short search I found a recipe that would work. Since the dough needed to be chilled at least an hour, I decided to make the dough the night before. Everything went well. Two batches of dough chilling in the fridge ready for the morning.

Morning came. My daughter and her children were to arrive a about 10:00. At almost ten I get a phone call. The boy is still asleep. He has been woken several times and still can't / won't get up. No problem I say. Let him sleep.come over when he getes up. I decide at this point that the kids will enjoy decorating the cookies so I might as well start baking them and have some ready to go when they arrive. Good thought right? So I start baking. I take out my board and cover it with flour. I have my new rolling pin and the bands that go around it so I can roll the dough to the correct thickness.
( My mom didn't need those). The cookie cutters are out. I have two of each shape we plan to use so there will be no fighting. I take the dough out of the fridge. It is too cold to roll. Maybe that is why the directions said to chill the dough for one hour. I finally get the dough rolled out. Those thickness bands don't work well. I get two trays of cookies cut out. I put one in the oven for eight minutes and the doorbell rings. My family is here. Now I have a dog. She is a very cute boxer who is just a year old. Normally when the grandchildren come over she gets excited but can be controlled. Not today. This dog is so excited that the children can not get into the house. Cookies in the oven, children trying to come in the house and I am trying to restrain 45 lbs of dog while trying to hold the door open. After some yelling for my husband to come help me we get everyone in the house, the dog outside and the first batch of cookies out of the oven with out being burned.
At this point I find out that my daughter was in such a hurry to bring the children over ( not to disappoint me) that the little man hasn' t had breakfast. Everything stops! He needs breakfast. What kind of a Bubbie would I be if I didn't make breakfast. The second batch of cookies comes out of the oven as I scramble up some eggs. (Little man's favorite) After breakfast we are ready to bake cookies. Everyone washes their hands so we don't end up with black cookie dough. My daughter and I roll out dough for both children and show them how to use the cookie cutters. They do a great job. We get most of the dough cut out and leave some for the kids to play with. Time for the little ones to have a break until all the cookies are baked.
I make the icing that will cover half of the cookies and we all wash hands again. The mommy and I frost the cookies while the little ones put sprinkles on top of the frosting. I have been smart here. All of the sprinkles are in little bowls with spoons and each child has their own sided cookie sheet to work on. (Contain the mess as much as possible) The kids sprinkle the cookies. Who knew that blue and red sprinkles would be more popular than all the other colors! They did a good job even if all the sprinkles are on one side of each cookie. Then I spread chocolate frosting on the undecorated half of the cookies and we made sandwich cookies.

The whole process did not seem as easy as when my mother made cookies with my daughter oh so many years ago. I just hope the memory is as sweet for my family as that one is for me.