Holiday Snowball Cakes

I have been doing a lot of reading about the “Law of Cause and Effect.” If what you want is happiness, peace, love, and friendship, then you should be happy, peaceful, loving and a true friend. Basically, whatever we put out in the Universe is what comes back to us. I have spent the past 6 months or so focusing on how to use positive energy to succeed and be happier in life. There are so many people that come in and out of your life and it's up to you to surround yourself with those who make you a better person. Many will have a negative impact, pass judgment, have bad intentions, or just want something. They should not be given any time as they will just drain you of anything positive. Lily and I have been practicing positive energy over the last month just in the way we speak. Every night when she helps me do the dishes and clean up I tell her how proud I am of her and how helpful she is to Mommy. Instead of telling her to "clean up", we make everything a positive and I tell her how wonderful it is that she is helping me and she honestly feels pride in doing that. I even see her teaching Olive. She will say "Ollie we don't have someone to clean our clothes so it's important we take turns doing the laundry!" She even ended the sentence with, "Olive, isn't this fun!!!" It cracks me up, because they actually love it. They love the entire process of helping. She has so much compassion and she is teaching Olive each and every day. I honestly can see them beaming with pride when they do a simple task. Even in the car this morning, it took an hour to get to school and Olive and I pretended Henry (our dog) was in the car riding on her back. She thought it was hilarious. We spent an entire hour talking about Henry on her back and Henry eating her car seat and licking her face and she was beaming with happiness just playing make believe with me. We didn't listen to music. I didn't talk on the phone. We just enjoyed each other in that very moment.

Last night we made snowball cakes together, as a family. It started out a little rough with the kids fighting over the dough and the mix and who would stir and who would pour the oil, so I stopped everything and had them sit on the couch. I told them we couldn't continue until they came up with a way to work together and be teammates. And they did. They sat there on the couch and held hands and Olive said she would pour the cake mix in and Lily said she would add the oil and water and mommy would do the eggs and then they would both stir. We worked together and kept it positive.

Our Snowball cakes came out perfectly. And best of all, they were made with happiness, peace, love, and friendship.

Holiday Snowball Cakes

Ingredients
1 Box Betty Crocker™ cake mix (any flavor)
Water, vegetable oil and eggs called for on cake mix box
1 container (12 oz) Betty Crocker™ Whipped frosting (any flavor)
Powdered Sugar

Directions
1. Line several cookie sheets with waxed paper. Make and bake cake mix as directed on box for 13x9-inch pan, using water, oil and eggs. Cool completely, about 1 hour.

2. With fingers, crumble cake into large bowl.

3. Add frosting; mix well with fingers until dough forms. Shape into quarter-size balls and place on cookie sheets.

4. Freeze for about 15 minutes then remove and roll in powdered sugar before serving.

Recipe adapted from Betty Crocker.