Cookie Jar

I have a love-hate relationship with parents' magazines. I love to read and have amassed a startling number of subscriptions to monthly reads, including several child-parent type mags. But to be honest, the parents magazines annoy me. They always profile these freakish parents who live and breathe their kids and come up with things that I would never even dream of in order to ensure a perfect universe in which to raise their precious young'uns.

(Like the one magazine that profiled the mommy who wanted her children to eat only organic veggies so she started a completely organic garden in her backyard, complete with her own COMPOST PILE. I mean seriously. Who has time to do this? Really? In this same issue, they also profiled a mother who keeps her grocery list on her blackberry so she can buy food that only has rebates back into her children's college accounts and is on sale. Ain't she thrifty? Now, when I go to the grocery store, I'm just happy if I remember to use a few coupons, the kids are alive at the end and I haven't harmed any innocent shoppers with my gigantic, extended kiddie friendly shopping cart. (After reading this issue, I think I both canceled my subscription and wrote them a letter asking if anyone who works at their magazine actually HAS any children. I doubt it.)

Okay, I digress. Every once in a while, one of these magazines does have a cute tradition or a tip I find helpful. A few months ago one of the blurbs was about creating a winter tradition of baking cookies. A mother wrote that she had a special winter themed cookie jar she brought out at the first snow and baked cookies with her kids to keep it filled all winter long. (Now this I can get behind! Cute cookie jar and baking! Yipee.)

I picked up an adorable snowman jar at Target and with help from the boys, we got a baking. The boys love the baking, they definitely love the eating and they love peeking into our cookie jar for a snack.

This afternoon, the cookie jar was empty. Unfortunately, our cabinets were also pretty empty. Using the ingredients on hand, we improvised a chocolate cookie with mini marshmallows. I wasn't quite sure how it would turn out, but we may have hit a home run. Aidan declared it his "favorite cookie ever." Brennan concurred that it was "the bestest cookie." And Griffin yelled triumphantly, "And I make it! I make the cookie!" before he took a huge bite.

The boys glowed as we filled up our jar with our creations. And I decided that maybe, just maybe, there may be some value to these parents magazines after all.