Baking

I'll start my update with baking. We've done a LOT of baking in the past week. Oy. Let's see...

I got together with my grand college pals, Molly & Melissa, on Saturday to bake cookies:

(Sidenote: Isn't it awesome that we're still such good friends 19+ years after first meeting and that we live close enough to get together like this?! Yay!! And you other college friends who live far away...move already! lol) Back to the cookies...

Yeah, this was a first for us and we went a little overboard perhaps. ;) By my count, we made about 10 batches (not dozen, batches) of cookies. Oy. We were just having such fun without children underfoot and and with good company and with a stand mixer available (we baked at Molly's...she has awesome tools...Melissa and I were jealous). ;) At least a couple of the recipes were off of Pinterest and are now highly recommended! (The salted caramel pretzel chocolate chip cookies were freakin' awesome, and the sprinkle cookies were nice and easy.) It was a lovely afternoon!

The next day, Sunday, I had Noah and Micah make a double batch of the sprinkle cookies for our JOAD potluck:

Funny story. Micah was so excited as he was reading off the directions to us. Noah and I turned to get something, and turned back just in time to see Micah pushing up his sleeves with a look of pure glee in his eyes. You see...the recipe called for him to "mix by hand"...and, obviously, he interpreted that literally. ;) We caught him in time to explain the need for a spoon but were chuckling for a good while. 

The next day, I made them make another double batch for us to take with us on Tuesday when we went to a cookie exchange with some homeschool friends. Again, great time! We managed, somehow, with six families (16 kids ranging from 2 years to 12 years old) to pull it all off (some of us brought stuff already made, some brought cookie dough ready to be baked and some did the whole shebang there in the kitchen we'd rented to get together)...and the kids all got to play with friends so that we don't need to worry about coordinating play dates quite so soon, lol. Oh, and given the mood I was in (see my future ziggurat post), I made up a gallon of apple cider sangria to take for us moms. ;) (And, if you're keeping count, we're up to about 20 batches of cookies that I've been in the kitchen for between Saturday and Tuesday, lol.)

Finally, yesterday was Noah and Micah's cooking class bake sale. They've been baking every week for the past month or more. We've had to bring additional ingredients each week and ended up storing most of the goods in our garage freezer for weeks (which is fine but did mean remembering to transport things to and fro, lol). The bake sale was during lunch and the winter program and appears to have gone off quite well. Each of our three boys spent $5 or more of their own money on baked goods, so did their part in contributing, lol. (By this point, I was immune and did not buy or eat a single thing from the bake sale. So there.) ;)

And this, friends, would be why I'm *not* baking things for teachers or neighbors or coaches this year. Sorry. ;) (I have other, non-baked goods, gifts mostly ready. Can't tell you, though. It's a secret.)