Sugar Cookies With Royal Icing

Andy dropped the kids off at preschool one day
and signed me up to make cookies for Abby's cowpoke lunch.

Mind you, when I dropped them off I signed up to bring spray butter for AJ's cowpoke lunch...
because well...one will take all day to make with three children, as well as destroy the kitchen
and the other...you can just run into the store and grab.

Thanks Andy.

So, I decided go big or go home.
Let's make sugar cookies from scratch and decorate them with royal icing.
I could add little stitching details and put each kid's initials on their cookie.
This will be fun.
People will be so impressed.

um-hum.

Andy found some western themed cookie cutters for only $0.76 each!
And I found a fabulous blog with a sugar cookie recipe
and step-by-step directions with pictures on how to decorate cookies with royal icing.
This was going to be great!

And so begins my grand cookie adventure.
This is the part where you no longer ask things like, "How do you do it all? Three kids and you still sew and make cute cookies?"

Because you will soon get a sense of the craziness I call reality.

10:30am...Brody has been fed...twice, I am dressed in clothes that could count as pajamas, and the kids have had yogurt and cereal for breakfast.

Time to start gathering ingredients.

With the kids caught up in a new Lego set, I went unnoticed for about ten minutes.
Then my helpers descended upon me.

At first, the damage to the kitchen was minimal.

Dough ready to chill in the fridge by 1:30pm.
Not too bad.

Then all hell broke loose.

The kids started fighting and suddenly developed a sassy attitude towards their dear mother.
To which I realized...oh we haven't eaten lunch yet.
Damn cookies.
Here, I had a brilliant idea...let's just load up in the van, swing by daddy's work to grab the cookie cutters he bought over his lunch hour, and the best part...eat lunch at Sonic!

We finally make it back home about 4:15 in the afternoon.

The cookies are still in the form a giant dough ball in the fridge.
I should start thinking about dinner...but they just ate lunch at like 3...so we should be good for awhile.

Cookies cooling by 6:00 when Andy gets home and asks, "What's for dinner?"
Ha! Wrong thing to ask.
So, we had a "fend for yourself" dinner night.
I'm not even sure what they ate.

7:30pm all the cookies are out of the oven, Andy takes the kids to get ready for bed, and I begin phase one of frosting with royal icing.

9:30pm and I have 36 iced sugar cookies for Abby's cowpoke lunch!
No stitching detail or initials.
Just 36 plain cookies with royal icing.

11:00pm the kitchen has been repaired back to its normal state.
11:15 I make it to bed.

And I still need to run to the store and grab AJ's spray butter tomorrow.