pass the positivitiy, please

As you are all aware, I was a tad upset on Saturday morning. Which is out of character, because like any true Minnesota girl, I love a good storm (just as long as I am not driving in it). But not only was it ANOTHER weekend storm, but it ruined my Christmas shopping plans. At the time, I had not purchased a single present, and my Christmas list was growing by the second. Our lives have been so busy lately with basketball practices, league games and tournaments thrown in with our usual schedule of Driver's Training and Religion classes, that I hadn't had any opportunities to go shopping without all three girls at my side. Saturday was supposed to be the day. The day I was going to drive down to Mall of America with a few girlfriends and shop like I had never shopped before. Well, we all know it didn't happen.

Instead of being a crab all day, I decided to change my attitude and fix the problem to the best of my abilities. Sunday was going to be the Annual Adolphson Girls Christmas Cookie Baking Day . . . so I simply flipped the two days and figured I could bake cookies a day earlier and go shopping a day later. Seems easy enough, right?

Well, quite honestly, it didn't start out like the aren't-I-the-best-mom-in-the-world-for-baking-with-my-girls kind of morning. It went a little something like this:

Ella - "Mom, can we make the cookies now"
Me - "Soon Ella, we have to wait until Claire takes a nap"
two minutes later
Ella - "Mom, can we make the cookies now"
Me - "Not quite time yet, you have to be patient"
repeat this conversation at least 50 times.
Me - "Okay, fine. Let's just get things rolling so when Claire wakes up we will be all ready to go"
Ella - "YAY!!" (she totally beat me)

I had Ella start crushing the Oreos for the Oreo Balls (Yum)
Ella - "This is too hard and takes too long"
Enter Jocie
Jocie - "Mom! You started without me?!"
Me - "No. We haven't really started yet. I am just having Ella start crushing the cookies. Maybe you should help her."
Jocie takes over the crushing job . . . then Ella starts whining that Jocie is doing her job and Jocie starts yelling at Ella to stop whining . . . Ella ends up storming off.
Then, when Jocie starts up the (very old and cheap) hand-held mixer, it can't handle mixing crushed cookies in with whipped cream cheese and starts to smoke . . .

In between all this, I try to start taking pictures of the merry event, and my camera will NOT focus and will not allow me to take many pictures. I continue to try and get more and more upset by the minute!

One mommy moment alone and one phone call to National Camera Exchange later, and things started to go much better around the house. I surrendered to the fact that my camera wasn't going to work well today, but I was going to bring it in the next day, and I felt much better. The older girls and I started on the sugar cookie cut outs and all was right with the world again. Here are the photos I did manage to get:

All-in-all, it was a really fun afternoon . . . we just had to work through a few wrinkles first. I wish I had a photo of our finished work, but I assure you they looked as good as they taste!