Cousin Pizza Party

As the years go by, I have a harder and harder time coming up with gift ideas for my niece and nephews.  Their parents and grandparents are extremely generous, so I end up feeling like there is nothing else I can give them that they don't already have.  I wanted to find something different this past Christmas, so instead of another toy or physical item, I decided to give the gift of TOGETHER TIME!  I had this idea mulling around in my head for some time but couldn't decide what kind of activity we could all do since the kids range from 2 to 7.

My husband and I make pizza every Friday night (with store bough crust and sauce) and we started allowing our son to help assemble the pizza shortly after he turned 2.  He loves helping, and it was fun to watch him learn the steps for pizza assembly and how to properly execute all of the steps.  One Friday evening, I decided it would be fun for all of the cousins to make pizzas together!  It was an activity simple enough for the young ones to execute, and novel enough for the oldest to enjoy.  Not to mention you get to eat PIZZA at the end.  I knew that the concept of a "together time" would be difficult for the kids to grasp and would make for a rather dissapointing present opening, so I decided that I needed some kind of physical representation of what we would be doing wrapped under the tree.  Our Friday night experience once again informed my decision; a sauce mishap led me to realize the necessity of aprons for each child.  And so the Cousin Pizza Party (with individual aprons for each child) was born!

The kids were semi excited to open their aprons and party invitations/ingredient order forms at Christmas, but I don't think they initially understood what was going on.  It took a little bit of talking up, and eventually they were all really excited!  Rob and Sheila (their parents) thought it was a nice idea until they found out they weren’t expected to attend… then they thought it was a MASTERFUL IDEA.  They dropped the kids off around 5 pm on the agreed upon evening and left for a date night.  And so it was that we had temporary custody of FIVE children.  Here is a photo of the oldest four, ages 7, 4, 2.5, and 2 (Ellen not pictured as she was too young to participate in both the assembly and consumption of the pizza).

{Cousins!}

The evening went very smoothly.  They all listened attentively to the directions and did most all of the assembly on their own.  Everyone had a blast, although the pizzas were admittedly quite boring since none of the cousins wanted anything but cheese on their pizzas.  They all ate some, but not all of the pizza, which was a little large for such small tummies.  My favorite quote was from the 7-year-old:  "At first I thought that regular pizza [presumably from Pizza Hut] was better, but now I think this is very good pizza and I like it better!"

{Cousins, hard at work}

 {Crust + Sauce + Cheese = Delicious}

{Pizza COMSUMED}

After they finished consuming the fruits/pizzas of their labor, I sent them off to play while I cleared the counters and prepared cookie making ingredients.  They all came back to help mix in an ingredient and help scoop cookie dough onto the baking sheet.

{This is the way we scoop the dough...}



{Helper}

{WAIT... can't eat them yet!}

{Finished product... yummm}

  Another gem from the 7-year-old:  "I didn't think that I would like oatmeal cookies, but these are pretty good.  I really like them."

{Cutie Patootie}

We had so much fun that I decided to try and make the Cousin Pizza Party an annual event!  I am not sure if the party will be their Christmas present again next year or if I will try to come up with a new group activity.  Regardless, I will have to come up with an alternative to the personalized aprons... Feel free to leave any ideas for future activities or apron alternatives in the comments below!

{Note:  Yes, I realize that this post is several months late!  I have had it 99% finished for at least 3 months but kind of fell off the blogging wagon.  I do most of my blogging at lunch while I am at work since the internet connection is fast and I have a nice, big screen to work with, and somehow I couldn't load either Google home page or Blogger.  I randomly tried again today and I magically got access.  So there will likely be a flurry of blog activity as I post some "back issues" of Ellen's monthly updates and some Goal Updates as well.}