Friday, February 15, 2008

Valentine's Day Fun

We had quite the Valentine's Day adventure yesterday. Oliver and Rachel were a little bit jealous that Tristan got to have a Valentines party at school, so I had been telling them all week that we could do our own little party at home and make heart cookies to decorate. They were very excited.

They had a lot of fun making the dough, eating the dough, and cutting out heart shapes. After a lot of work and mess, we finally had three trays of cookies ready to bake. That's when disaster struck. I thought the oven had been preheating the whole time, but when I took our finished cookie sheets over to put them in, I realized it was still very cold.

To make a long story short, it turned out that our oven was broken (the ignitor had gone out). The kids were devastated (and I was a little bit, too - and not just because I knew we had to get the oven fixed - I was really hungry for cookies). They were so sad that we couldn't cook them. I started getting on the phone trying to call different repair places to figure out what to do. It was very stressful. Both Oliver and Rachel kept asking why we couldn't make them. Oliver kept trying to convince me that we could cook them in the microwave, and Rachel wanted to just frost the dough and eat it.

Oliver came in to the study and kind of shyly asked, "Mom, what are the kinds of things that we can say prayers about?" I thought it was so sweet that he had thought about that (for the record, I had already said several prayers in my head). I told him he could say a prayer if he wanted. When Rachel heard that, she said she was going to go upstairs to her room and say a prayer, too. This was her prayer: "Dear Heavenly Father, please help Heavenly Father to know how to fix our pan." (I guess she was not clear on what the exact problem was. Either that, or she thinks our oven is called a pan).

I finally found someone who could come fix it for a reasonable price, and three hours + $140 later, we were able to bake our cookies. When the kids woke up from their naps and Tristan got home from school, the cookies were nice and cooled and ready to frost. The kids had so much fun and the cookies turned out great, but I'm not sure they were worth all the trouble.

At least we got some good pictures:

4 comments:

Audra said...

It's looks like you guys had a blast. Oh. it's too bad your oven went out. I really think I know what you guys went through, a few months ago Ty and I were trying to make dutch babies in the oven and for some reason the butter was not melting. Come to find out our oven was broken and wouldn't heat...suddenly the only thing we wanted were dutch babies. Fortunately Ty was able to buy the part and install it. Well, love you guys, glad you had a fun and adventurous day.

Beccarigg said...

I'm glad there was a happy ending to your frustrating experience! It's so hard to explain to little ones why things won't work the way they're supposed to sometimes. I think it's so sweet though that Ollie thought to ask Heavenly Father for help. : ) It's moments like that when you realize that all your teaching is actually getting through : )

Jennifer M said...

Sweet pictures--looks like it was worth it all!

Jesse said...

Way to go. Sounds like you were able to make it a fun day for everyone despite the little technical setback. The kids will only ever remember the cookies, I'm sure.