Melissa won the raffle for a dozen decorated sugar cookies, and she chose a set of Hello Kitty cookies for her BFF’s birthday in Las Vegas.

Now, I don’t have a cutter or anything for these, so I carved the dough by hand to get as close to the shapes I needed. I think it turned out pretty well!

I also carefully drew freehand the characters. I held a picture in my left hand & attempted to recreate it with my right hand & a bag of black piping icing. 🙂

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I’m up, and I’m baking cookies. (Naturally!)

I had only three hours of sleep last night, and it was broken sleep at that. A certain feline was causing lots of mischief. *grumpy face* I gave up at 5:30am and got up for the day. Despite that, I attended a meeting at A.J.’s school, and I still met Jack for a lunch date at his school. I had a great time with “The Jack Pack!” (a term coined by A.J. for Jack and his friends), chatting with his new classmates over turkey and gravy. His friends really seem to love him, and that makes my heart swell!

While I was at Jack’s school, his old teacher flagged me down and gushed about my teacher gifts from last year. She wanted to order 30 cookies for her students for next week, so that’s what I’m baking now. With all the thunderstorms, it’s taking an extra day for the icing to dry and fully harden, so I’ll start doing the decorating tomorrow.

Meanwhile, A.J. has politely told me that he doesn’t really want me to come eat lunch with him anymore. “Mom, I think everyone would be staring at me.” I understand, as I suspected middle school would be too old to continue the tradition. Still, a little piece of my heart broke knowing how grown up he really has become. *sniffle*

In addition, A.J. has a middle school dance to attend next Friday night. I offered to teach him some moves, and the look on his face was one of pure horror! I told him I was just joking. He had been worried about not knowing how to dance, but I explained to him that most school dances were really more “stand-arounds” than dances. I slipped for a moment and actually quoted, “You can dance if you want to” (It’s Safety Dance!), and again he let me know his utter embarrassment. “Mom, I don’t think anyone else is going to know GLEE songs!”

Oh, my funny, funny serious-yet-still-silly preteen!