Sunday was the first day of Miss Helping Hand's week of summer vacation.
She went directly from school to her part-time paying job as a receptionist and her part-time non-paying internship at the City Rescue Mission.
She did not pass GO, she did not collect $200.
And though she has a laundry list of things she must do before moving back to campus next week, we are dtermined to have some good mama/girlie time before she goes.
We started on Sunday evening by baking our traditional summertime sugar cookies.
We made a batch of pinky-red sugar cookie dough.
After it chilled, we rolled it out, cut it into circles with the biscuit cutter, and cut the circles in halves with a nice sharp knife.
Then we baked them just as the recipe directed.
Just as soon as we pulled them from the oven, while they were still on the baking sheets, we pressed the mini chocolate chip 'seeds' into the watermelon slices.
Here are Miss Helping Hands' helping hands, helping.
Miss Mary Mack was uncustomarily, er, um, rigid about seed placement right at first.
It still surprises me with laughter to see how differently these two approach the simplest things.
Still, they got the job done before the poor widdle rindless watermelon slices cooled down too much to hold the seeds.
Once they were cool, we made a thin green icing,...
...did the 'dip and roll',
...and set the cookies on a cooling rack until the excess 'rinds' dripped off and the icing set.
Then we paused for reflection.
And we decided this: Two of these little sweeties nestled alongside some vanilla ice cream in a little glass sherbet dish is just about the prettiest summer dessert you can imagine.
But if you don't have any vanilla ice cream...
...a glass of ice cold milk will do.