Helpers in the Kitchen

So yea, it's been a while. The past couple of weeks have been a roller coaster for us with different things going on here and there, but it is good to be able to get back to blogging. All I can say is that the Lord has been working in me in ways I haven't known before and it's been good. While I still love to blog about decor, I feel like things might be changing a bit in what I blog about, so that is why today's blog post is a bit different from the rest. 

I wouldn't say I love to cook, and I wouldn't say I hate it, but I will say that I do enjoy cooking most days and have recently started letting my kiddos help out more and more in the kitchen- not just cracking some eggs open into a bowl and stirring some things here and there. Like I mean, letting them cut up veggies for dinner and prepping tortillas to be put in the oven kind of helping out. 
I had a moment today where before I started cooking dinner I thought, "Why not ask if my kiddos want to help me out?!" So I asked and they, of course, were delighted to help...especially my middle child! Give her a plastic knife any day and she is a happy girl (as crazy as that might sound!).   :)

I started by letting my girls cut up some cilantro on the cutting board and later they got to stir some of the ingredients together in a bowl to make some chicken enchiladas for dinner.

That was fun!

And as you can see, things got quite messy along the way, but I learned that it was going to be okay. Usually, I would have been hovering over them picking up every little bit of something that dropped on the floor, but today, I just let the food fall to the floor and cleaned things up after we were done- it felt a bit freeing to be honest.

(Also, I think these girls would wear their new shirts from their mema every day if they could).

It took a while for my oldest to chime in on helping us out in here, but she really liked cutting up the onions. Since they were using plastic knives, it wasn't the easiest thing to do, but they had fun with it and learned a thing or two about food preparation.

I even let one of my girls spoon the chicken and veggie mixture onto our flour tortillas...she was very insistent on doing it herself so I couldn't say no. I've come a long way people! Ha! She actually did a great job with this part and was so proud of herself. 

I don't know exactly why it has taken me this long to let my girls really help me out in the kitchen. 
Maybe it was the worry that the kitchen would be more of a mess to clean than if I were just working by myself and I didn't want to deal with that. 
Maybe it was the thought that it would take a lot longer to prep dinner if they helped me out and I didn't think I had time for that. 
I don't really know exactly what was holding me back, but I'm glad they got the opportunity to really get their hands dirty, if you will, and learn something new. It was fun for all of us and I can see us doing this a lot more often in the future.

What about you? Do you ever feel brave enough to let your little ones help out in the kitchen, even if it's not prepping something as big as a dinner for 5? If you haven't what is holding you back? Go ahead and let them help, it's well worth it in the end!