Happily Havlik: Cookies for Santa

This Christmas has been by far the most exciting Christmas to get ready for. Haylen really caught on to the magic of Christmas…Santa, reindeer, her elf of the shelf. Seeing her face light up as she learned a little about each them. Oh. My. The excitement was quite contagious! As she soaked it all in, I knew I wanted to make this holiday season special. I wanted to start new traditions with our little family. You know, the ones you look forward to each year. She was ready, and so was I!
On the way back from our little trip to Dallas right before Thanksgiving, we stopped in Waco at the Heitmiller Steakhouse. While we were waiting on our food, I took Haylen to walk around in the little shop they had at the front of the restaurant. The poor kid needed to stretch her legs after being cooped up in her carseat for so long. As we looked around, she was immediately drawn to the Christmas tree they had decorated in the far back corner. “Mommy! Mismas tree! Mismas lights!!!” While back there, she also noticed several pictures they had hung on the wall with the big man in red plastered all over them. She pointed up to them with a quizzical look on her face. “Mommy, this?” I then explained to her that that was Santa. I then told her how he comes to visit on Christmas Eve and brings toys to sweet little girls and boys. I asked her, “Is Santa going to come see you?” With her hands stretched way above her head she jumps up shouting, “YES!!!” I then told her Santa might be hungry when he comes. “Should we leave him something to eat? What should we leave him?” To which our child quickly replied, with great enthusiasm I might add, “Bock, Bock, and Rice!!!” (Quick side note here, the kid LOVES bock, bock (chicken) and rice. When you ask her what she wants to eat, 99.9% of the time, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, she replies, “bock, bock, and rice.”) She was quite certain that if she loved chicken and rice, so did Santa! After a quick fit of giggles on my part, I told her that while Santa might like that what he really liked was cookies. Her reaction to this information was priceless. Her eyes lit up, she began to giggle with one little hand covering her mouth like she was just let in on a secret, and very hilarious, joke and said, “Santa likes cookies!!!” It was then and there I knew there I MUST bake cookies for Santa with my sweet little girl.
Christmas Eve morning, she and I set to work making cream cheese sugar cookies (this might quite possibly be the best sugar cookie recipe ever) for dear ol’ Santa. He was sure to love them! I sat her up on the counter and really let her help. Before starting she had to try on all the cookie cutters. Apparently, they double as bracelets.

As we began, I gave her the job of opening the butter and putting it into the mixer. She may or may not have tried to take a huge bite of a stick of butter…

She intently watched as it mixed…

And quickly learned that if she pulled the knob on the side she could send the mixer in to super warp speed and send flour flying every where!

She also had to try the dough, as any great pastry chef would.

Rolling out the dough was quite the adventure. She proceeded to try the flour we were going to roll the dough out on. Why? Who knows!?! Apparently it seemed like a really good idea to her at the time.