cookie swap 2011

Monday was the Great Lisa Groves Cookie Swap 2011. It's my favorite event leading to Christmas, and even though the thought of making twelve dozen cookies made me gag, I decided to partake.

I got my game on. Thursday I mixed three batches of batter for the Sugar and Spice cookies. They're my favorite, and ginger cookies seemed like a good and smart idea for this pregnant lady. On Friday my mom came to help me bake them all. The first batch came out flat and greasy. They looked like this:

Mom started asking questions. Questions like, how much butter did you put in each batch of dough? To which I replied, "well, it calls for 3/4 cup butter, and I used three out of the four sticks in the box." I knew my error as I said it. I looked wide eyed at my mom and she sighed, "Oh honey, you are so pregnant."

And then she proceeded to spend the rest of her day in my kitchen whipping up three new batches of dough, attempting to resurrect the double butter batters with oatmeal, which sort of made them taste like greasy gingersnaps with oatmeal, baked all 12 dozen cookies from the new batter, cleaned my kitchen and went home after it was all over.

Can we get three cheers for my mom?!!

The cookie swap was, as always, fantastic. I love this gathering. I am very much included only because I am a sister-in-law. The rest of these ladies have been friends for over 20 years... they started out having babies together and now are sending them off to college. They have done plenty of life together and it is a privilege to get to listen in, watch the friendships in action, get to be a part of the stories told, the heartache shared and the deep laughter.

And it's always nice to come home with twelve dozen different cookies. Rory might love this event even more than I do, if that's possible.

rub a dub dub

Confession: Ivar hasn't been the most hygienic baby for the past six months. At some point around six months old, he decided he didn't like baths. (I'm realizing that this probably was because I was still bathing him in the kitchen sink in the baby tub because our bathtub is really high on the sides, a claw foot that sounds fancier than it is. The sides are really high which makes it hard to kneel and reach the baby...) As a result, bath time has been a wrestling match, usually ending with me as the soggy loser and both of us tuckered out. It's not terrible, but it's not fun either and leaves a mom a bit unmotivated to get the baby in the bathtub.

But something changed recently and we've got a little fish on our hands. He loves bath time. And I am realizing that the mom's who make bath time a part of their bedtime routine are really just trying to save their sanity. Because bath time comes at fall-apart time. The time when everyone needs to go to bed, but it's still just too early.

Bath time turns 6:00-7:00 into splashes and happiness, and mom's get to sit on the closed toilet seat and rest their weary selves for a moment. It's such a win win. Ivar looks nicer without crusted oatmeal in his hair and I get to sit in a steamy, humid room with a happy baby.

advent and preparation

We have a tree up with beautiful white lights on it. And I have a fisher price nativity set my mom gave us a few years ago that Ivar likes to play with (and by play, I mean throw the shepherds and wisemen around). But other than that, I haven't put up one single decoration. Oh, except the barn to a nativity set that I brought upstairs a few weeks ago...but I haven't unpacked any boxes to find the people, so it's just a barn. No peeps in the stable.

I just don't have it in me this year. I'm tired. I'm queasy and I sort of don't think I can handle adding more clutter to our stuff. As it stands our house is strewn with brightly colored toys and tupperware and it already feels full. More decorations just seems like it would be too much.

In an effort to comfort myself, to give permission to this years lack of tradition-making, I have been on a quest for fun advent ideas. And I found this post and wanted to link to it so that next year, when I'm feeling spry and energized, I can be the supermom I know I can be. Just not this year.

So check out this link of fun ideas for the 25 days leading up to Christmas. She has great ideas for family outings, special nights at home, service projects for others and then writes about that super fun idea of wrapping up all of the Christmas books at the beginning of the month and then letting your kids unwrap one book a night all throughout December and reading it before bed. I love this idea.

egg in the hole?!!

I am working my way through Pioneer Woman's cookbook and thought it was so odd she put a recipe in there for a piece of bread with a fried egg in the middle. Her cooking is always a bit more complicated than that.

But last night, as a last ditch attempt at supper (we're low on everything...) I decided to give it a go.

And oh my goodness, it was good. It wasn't just eggs and toast. It was like something different, with some egg baked into the toast, and the toast in ready position to sop up the runny egg. I don't even usually like sunnyside up eggs, but with enough salt and pepper I am a believer in this SUPER EASY and hey-that-felt-like-a-real-dinner recipe.

Here's her "recipe." I have a feeling I am really behind on this one. My guess is that many of you were raised on this, but egg in the hole is a new find for me, and I couldn't be more happy to have found another easy-peasy supper to add to the mix.

little house

Oh have you seen Little House lately?!! It's perfect for me right now because the frames don't move too fast, and the only food they show is ma pulling out bread from the oven. I can't get over how sucked in I get to these episodes. I called my sister yesterday after having watched the episode The Blizzard. I started crying at some point in the middle of the show, and by the end it was the ugly cry. And then the show was over and I still was ugly crying.

Annika watched Little House faithfully when she little and she claims all of her forehead wrinkles are from watching this show and the worry and heartache she took upon herself on behalf of the Ingalls.

Anyway, if you're looking for a good gift for some girls in your life, I can think of few things better than the books or the dvd's.