Bread

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. ~John 6:35

We're having the missionaries over for dinner tonight, like we do every Friday. I decided to be ambitious and try out a new recipe for some awesome homemade spaghetti. The sauce is looking and smelling fantastic so far. I have yet to try it (weird, I know), but Jacob says it's great.
Now for the garlic bread to go with it. Since I was planning on going hard-core with the sauce, I bought a bagged salad and was going to do some frozen garlic bread. But, since our local grocery store is itty bitty, they didn't have any. 

Plan 2: Toast up some bread and put butter and garlic salt on it. But .. .I used the last of our bread for my sandwich at lunch. 

Well, says I, let's go ALL OUT and make some breadsticks. This is very risky, folks. The few instances I've tried to make any sort of bread, I make a huge mess, the dough doesn't turn out right, and the finished product is so-so, leaving me and myself as a giant ball of frustration. Side note: This is why my husband is the bread maker in the family. Alas, he had his first school meetings this afternoon, which made the bread situation up to me. 

Let's do it.

Oh, but let's add to the mix a three year old.

>And you know what .. .it turned out alright! Thankfully we have a big table now, so Laura could just sit plopped up there while I sat in a kitchen chair. Granted, she didn't have any clothes on besides a shirt (that's the mom-laziness factor of not putting a diaper on after her last attempt on the potty), and we both made a huge mess. But, I decided I was going to have fun with this .. .and we did! I can see how I easily could have gotten frustrated and shooed Laura away, but I didn't. I think because of that I held myself in check better .. .I was more ok with the mess and the sticky goo-y dough because I wanted it to be a fun experience for me and my daughter. She was so good at pulling out a wad of dough and holding it in her hands. Once I was done shaping what was in my hands, she'd hand me her wad, "Here you go Mommy, another one!"

She also pretended to add salt, sugar, and milk ("This needs more salt. And milk. Sugar and milk. Yum!") And she called them "poopsticks" more than once (#facepalm #toddlerforthewin). When we were all done, she wanted to lick the bowl, so I let her. "Can I eat the flour? Yum!" My most favorite thing was when I said, "This is fun, huh?" and Laura said, "No, it's not fun. It's DANGEROUS!!"

Someday she will smile for pictures.