Christiana Riemann

        The big clock in the hall struck 4 p.m. I was anxiously waiting for my mom to get home so we could bake cookies for my class. Those 20 minutes seemed like 20 years.

        My older sister, Kara, suggested I get out the ingredients so we would be ready to bake as soon as Mom walked in the door. I liked the flour, the sugar, the vanilla and the eggs in a perfect row.

        When I heard the buzz of a garage door opener, I went flying down the hall to open the door to the garage. Mom was talking a mile a minute as she got out of the car. The only thing I really understood was, “Go sift two cups of flour into the large glass bowl. I'll be down in a minute as soon as I change my clothes.”

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        I measured two cups of flour into the bowl. My sister helped me add the rest of the ingredients.

        Then calamity struck!

        My two dogs came running down the stairs, slipped on the runner in the hallway, and crashed into my mom's favorite potted plant. This caused the plant to fall by the door, and it shattered into a million pieces. Kara rushed in to see if anyone was hurt! We then began the two-hour clean-up job.

        In the meantime, Mom appeared in the kitchen. Seeing the half -finished batter, she proceeded to check the recipe. She carefully measured and sifted the flour and sugar and poured them in the bowl, thinking she would double the recipe. She mixed it and dropped the cookies onto the cookie sheet. After setting the timer for 25 minutes, she came to help us in the hallway. When the buzzer went off, we all hurried to the kitchen to check out the wonderful aroma.

        But when we opened the oven door, we screamed!

        The cookies that smelled so inviting were huge, gray mounds of unrecognizable blob. That's when we discovered that Kara had thought to double the recipe by adding two cups of flour before Mom did.

        We looked at each other and realized we had another two-hour clean-up job ahead of us.

        Christiana Riemann, 12, lives with her parents, Linda and Donald Riemann, and siblings Kara, Kim, Larry and Donald in Hamilton. Their accident-prone dogs are Max and Bixby. Christiana plays basketball and volleyball in her church's league, but, reading and writing are her favorite pastimes.

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