Rainbow Cookies: Happy Birthday Marilena!!

It's hard for us to believe that our oldest niece turned 12 years old today! Us being the youngest in our family, we remember people telling us, "Oh my God, I remember when you guys were born" or "Wow, you guys have grown up!"

Well, I guess this time we are the ones saying those things. We can't believe how much our niece has grown up! We can remember 12 years ago, we were in the 7th grade, we were so excited to become aunts. Since we were the youngest, it was so fun to have a little baby around!

When Marilena was born, we can remember being on the way home from school, and our mom would tell us that our brother, sister-in-law and Marilena were coming over that night. Right away, whoever being the fastest, one of us would scream out, "I call to hold Marilena first!"

Time has gone by SO fast and Marilena has grown up SO much. Next year she will be going into her teenage years and that is so crazy to us. She has truly grown up to be such a beautiful girl!

Look how pretty she is!

We wish we would have looked like that in the 6th grade! The years from 6th-8th grade definitely weren't our prettiest years... :

We celebrated her birthday last weekend. Lisa made these cookies for the party. They are made from our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe that we have posted before. You can find it here.

The only thing Lisa changed was that she used mini M&M's instead of chocolate chips.

They are especially great for kid parties because of all the colors!

Be sure to only bake the cookies for 12-13 minutes at 375 degrees. You want the edges to be brown only. The center might look a little raw and soft, but the cookies continue to cook after you remove them from the oven.

We only let our cookies cool for about 8-10 minutes and then we put them into a ziploc bag. The cookies stay soft and chewy this way.

Happy Birthday Marilena! We love you so much!

<3