Dog Days of Winter???

Dog days of summer are lazy days right?  What do we call long, cold winter days where you really just want to stay in bed all day?  Tuesdays and Thursday we have no regular day time commitments. These days lend themselves to a bit of laziness if we don't have something on the calendar.  Brandon left for work around 6:30 and Grant was already cuddled up in bed with me at 6:00.  Not long after B left Elizabeth made her appearance.  We lounged in bed for awhile until tummies starting asking for breakfast and we emerged from our warm cocoon.  As I was picking up breakfast dishes it occurred to me that I don't have that many lazy days left.  Elizabeth will be in kindergarten next year (small tear), but I am also reminded that this entire year is kind of like a bonus with her because she could be in kindergarten now.  So I said, "Kids? Who wants to go crawl back in bed?!" Cuddling and watching TV was good until Grant got a bit restless so again emerged.  I said we should take showers and get ready but I really wasn't ready yet.  Then I got the idea to make donuts.  Brandon got a Fry Daddy for Christmas so we could have really good fried donuts!  I began searching for a recipe and as I expected all the recipes I found involved a lot of rest time (waiting!).  I was on my 3rd search when Elizabeth pipes up with "Hey mom, Pioneer Woman has a recipe for donuts!" Oh my gosh, of course she does honey!! So I quickly scan the recipe and am delighted to not find hours upon hours of raise time - just a brief one hour.  Ok, so we can whip these babies up, get ready and then fry them.  Perfect plan.  Grant and I start mixing and I have the dough all ready and then read "REFRIGERATE OVERNIGHT FOR AT LEAST 8 HOURS"  What?! How did I miss that the first time.  But I wasn't really going to let a recipe stand in the way of my kids and hot donuts.  I channeled my inner food scientist and revamped the instructions and in an hour we had raised donuts and hot oil!

Grant, our dough boy - trust me this was not good tasting sugar cookie dough - flour and yeast - yuck!

I started with the donut holes first.  Note to any future donut makers out there, don't wait too long to turn them over otherwise gravity is not your friend! I couldn't get those heavy bottomed donut holes to flip the first time around.  But practice makes perfect and I didn't give up! Somehow I failed to take pictures of the kids enjoying this special treat - oh wait perhaps that is because my own fingers were sticky with glaze! I did good on this one! I am really glad I cut out that overnight wait period!

I told Elizabeth and Grant, "If you remember nothing else about your mother, remember this...I let you stay in your pajamas until 2:00 pm on a weekday and we ate donuts for lunch!"  (and that I love you more than all the hot donuts in the world!)

Don't worry Daddy we saved a few for you :)