The girl is growing up. When Andy leaves, Maddie has this way of…. getting instantly older. She cooks, she cleans, she helps Amelia with baths. Today we went to the dentist for a cleaning/sealant and not one complaint came out of her mouth. Amelia on the other hand… that’s a different blog post. Crazy kid.

We got home from the dentist and we decided to reward ourselves by making cookies and decorating them. Three dozen cookies later, the kitchen was only mildly destroyed. We ended up using this sugar cookie recipe because Maddie thought that it was cool that there was lemon in it: http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/dessert/recipe-best-cutout-sugar-cookies-038629 and then we used two different types of icing...

Okay, Maddie thinks all homework is fun…as long as she does it early in the evening when she hasn’t lost her steam.  But when she has lost her steam for the day and needs a little incentive, we shake things up a bit by putting brainy glasses on. Just like that, Maddie “felt” like she could get through her math and spelling words.  Of course, it helped that I promised her that she could help with banana bread if she finished quickly!!!

So what started out as a clean evening of baking, quickly turned into an “oh my gosh – what happened to this kitchen?” evening with floor from head to toe and smiles galore!

At least it made the homework fun….