Cookie Baking Night--My Thoughts

Tonight is Monday night, but a non-Cookie Baking Night. I thought I would take this opportunity to explain the Cookie Baking Nights a little further, how it began, and what I try to accomplish with it.

• Cookie Baking Night is the name I've given to the Monday night I spend with my nieces and nephews every other week. They come over at 5:00. We eat supper together. After supper we bake cookies (or brownies or bars, some kind of cooking project). After the cooking project we usually read a Bible story. We're currently working through the book Leading Little Ones to God by Marian Schoolland. It is a great book of systematic theology for children. I wish I knew about it years ago. The children are getting old enough now that they can read the Bible passage that accompanies the stories. They take turns doing this. After reading the Bible, we spend the rest of the evening in picture coloring, game playing, and the occasional movie. The kids are picked up at 8:00 pm.

• Cookie Baking Night began roughly 7 years ago. My now 9-year-old niece, Emily, was 2-1/2 at the time. Her sister, Meghan, was 7 at the time. I started out just having the girls over. Later that grew into inviting Joe (Meghan and Emily's older brother--all my middle brother's children) to join us. In hindsight, I wish I would have included Joe sooner. I have another niece, Kylie (my younger brother's daughter), who lives with her mother in Cottage Grove (about a 60+ minute drive from us). When she's able, she joins us as well. With a little Cookie Baking Night experience under my belt, I decided the appropriate age to start attending these events would be 3 years old. When our nephew, Ethan (Greg's sister's oldest boy) turned 3, he joined us for Cookie Baking Night. And his sister, Carissa, followed behind him a couple years later, when she turned 3.

• My intent with Cookie Baking Night is to establish relationships with these young people in my life, relationships that will continue throughout their adult years. My focus is the gospel. I want them to have the opportunity to hear it (often) and understand it.