"Have a holly jolly....."

Wednesday?

Yup - Peanut likes the song, but has chosen a day that isn't politically or religiously charged at all.

Have a holly, jolly Wednesday
It's the best time of the year
I don't know if there will be snow
so have a cup of Wednesday

Have a holly, jolly Wednesday
And in case you didn't hear
Oh by golly, have a holly, jolly Wednesday
This year

I have no idea why, but it cracks me up every time.

12 Days of Cookies, Day 8

I got a little wild in the bulk section of my favorite grocery store and ended up with a LOT of raisins. So, we made oatmeal raisin cookies! YUM! Plus, Granny really likes them. Meatball helped me dump all of the ingredients and use the hand mixer - he loves that thing. We substituted applesauce for the shortening, and the cookies aren't lacking at all. (Shortening just makes me want to heave...) Peanut couldn't have cared less about baking. He was only concerned with his trains, as usual, until bedtime. Once jammies were on and stories were being selected, he threw an enormous fit. Kicking and screaming about making cookies as if it would keep him away from his pillow. There were also excuses about being thirsty, being hungry, needing lip balm, having cold feet, having hot feet, blah, blah, blah, but the biggest and longest fit was certainly about the cookies. When the time comes to make shortbread on Tuesday, I'm sure that he will not care in the least.

12 Days of Cookies, Day 7

For day 7 of the big event, we (I) chose to EAT cookies instead of bake them. We had some friends over for brunch, and one family brought sugar cookies that were really very good. So we ate them. All day and all night. I had my last cookie at about 8:45pm. My scale presently hates me, and these late night cookies aren't going to help.

She's a purdy good catch

I haven't mentioned this lately. So, let me do it now.

My wife has been awesome lately. Really, dang cool. Yes, she drives me insane (especially when I have PMS). Yes, she is a clean freak (which means that if my glass of water isn't in my hand, it's in the dishwasher and I am then parched). Yes, she curses when she loses her temper (but, then again, so do I).

But, in the last month, she has single-handedly taken care of the boys while I crammed an entire semester into three weeks. She has made almost every meal for the year. She has (for the entire year) endured the monthly jam and other canning creations (which has, I must say, produced some masterpieces like peach-sage and apricot kiwi and key lime pie martini). She has done ALL of the holiday shopping. She has taken care of her mom and step-dad. She has built and re-built Peanut's train track about 703 times. She knows exactly which cat toy would make the Meatball smile super-big. She has worried enough about a party that *I* planned to make ALL of the food except the gingerbread waffles.

And, she only bitches a little bit and that's only about her football team (which does suck this year).

So, although it's been a hard, hard year, I want to say thanks to her. Publicly. Big enough for two or three people to see. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll even tell her that I posted this. (She hates it when I post stuff about her.)

12 Days of Cookies, Day 6

Can't be the holidays with two 3-yr olds without sugar cookies, can it? If we're not making a mess with the flour and the rolling and the cutting of the shapes, we'll for sure be making a monster mess tomorrow when we are decorating them with 5 other kids...

12 Days of Cookies - Day 5

Ah - up for tonight: chocolate banana cookies! Yum! Except that we didn't get cocoa from the store. Bub thought that I meant hot chocolate.... So, we just made banana cookies with walnuts. They basically taste like little slices of banana bread. They are quite tasty, but I'll still need to grab some cocoa. Can't have 12 days of this without Grandma June's brownies!

12 Days of Cookies - Day 4

Almost time to go to the grocery store, thank goodness! Tonight we had to really look hard to make sure we had for a good recipe with the ingredients we had on hand. Result? Carrot/orange cookies. They must have been good because they were mostly eaten up by people at work during our annual food-for-all.