We need this one!

I haven't been baking very much lately. When we first moved in I was so unhappy about our temporary housing situation that I didn't feel like settling in. Baking just seemed like I was giving in and making this house our home, and I was fighting that idea. For the whole month of July I kept saying, "When we buy our real house..." But Ariel had a doctor's appointment today and I had asked a friend in our ward to watch the other kids, so I felt like I should send along something yummy as a nice gesture and so I wouldn't feel bad about my kids eating their food. Weird and complicated, huh? Maybe I'll delve into the psychological issues behind that in my other blog someday. Anyway, Annika was so excited to "help" me. It was so cute, she kept getting out random kitchen utensils and telling me that we needed them. In this picture she is holding up a potato peeler, you know, for making blueberry muffins. Whenever we are going somewhere new, she gets a piece of paper and draws a map so that we can get there. When it was time to add the eggs she informed me that she knows how to crack an egg. I tried to show her how I did it, and she very gently tapped the egg on the side of the bowl and then very forcefully crushed the egg with her fist over the bowl. It was hilarious. Then she said, "That is how I crack eggs." Luckily, the egg shells all stayed attached and I caught them before they landed in the bowl. I really like to indulge her when she is so serious about her made up realities, but it gets problematic when she has too much information that is inaccessible to me, like when she "wrote" a letter and asked me to read it. It was line after line of up and down peaks. I made something up and then she got frustrated and said, "No, it says....."