Object Lesson gone wrong . . .

Monday night for family night I decided to get creative and do something fun. We made two batches of cookies, one following the recipe and the other without. I let the girls have at it with all of the cookie making ingredients. They got to put in as much as they wanted of whatever they wanted. I think they had three or for eggs in there and a cube of butter, a little more salt and baking soda than necessary but with butter and sugar you can't go too horribly wrong. They were tasting the dough and were quite impressed with themselves. I then let them blob the dough onto the cookie sheet as haphazardly as they desired. We stuck them in the oven and I think they were quite pleased with themselves. We then had a lesson about how the Lord has a "recipe" for happiness that He has given us to follow. We talked about the components of that plan; faith, prayer, going to church, giving service, etc. We talked about how you can make up your own recipe or you can follow the one that our Father in Heaven has layed out for us. (You get the idea) We then went to check out the final products. When the girls saw what had become of their creation they were mortified! Rachel hung her head and with deep understanding said, "we didn't follow the recipe." Then they became angry! They were so upset with me for allowing them to make a mess out of their cookies! Audrey said, "you just wanted your cookies to be the best!" Then the girls asked James to taste their cookies and when he didn't like them they were beside themselves! Rachel informed us both that she was going to "break up" with Daddy because he didn't like her cookies. We had two unhappy girls! Can you say estrogen?! The moral of this story is, if you are going to use this object lesson, have the kids follow the recipe and Daddy make the yucky cookies!