The Daily Hailey

My feet hurt. I haven’t baked that much in a long time, if ever. But it was incredible!!! I was stressing a while back (and likely every day since then) about how much there is still to do before Christmas finally makes its appearance. My mom called me last week and invited me over for a bake day – today.

I only learned recently that she has actually completed almost all of her Christmas baking, and therefore we were just going to bake for me. Instead of feeling too guilty, I accepted and brought over a few ingredients that my mom didn’t have, and my Kitchenaid mixer. And of course, the kids.

We arrived late morning and immediately jumped on making dough. We made peppernut dough first, which we had decided the night before that we were going to half, considering a whole batch would make hundreds and hundreds of little cookies. Its true. It does make that many. Know how I know? We forgot to half it. I’ll get more into that later. I don’t know about you guys but our dough was painfully sticky, so we had to cool it outside for a good long while before we could even roll it into fingers, and then freeze it again so we could cut it into coins. So while it cooled/froze, we made sugar cookie dough and cooled that in the fridge as well before we broke for lunch.

My mom and I used to eat smile fries on very special occasions. It was something only she and I liked. Today, she pulled out a bag she had specially bought for today, to share with Dekker and I. And I assure you, they are still just as delicious. We ate way too many, but it was so yummy and special. It wasn’t long after lunch that Dekker began lagging and getting a bit more irritable, so he went down for a nap and slept like a log all afternoon. That was helpful, considering the HUGE peppernut production that was ahead of us!

We should have taken pictures. Each pan had roughly 50 little cookies on it, and I’m going to say we easily made fifteen pans, but probably more. Sooo many! Luckily each pan only needed 7 mins. It took a few trial and error pans to get them right but the vast majority turned out beautifully. We couldn’t get everything done before supper so once the boys were home from work, we had a crock pot meal of pork chops in a mushroomy gravy with rice and corn. Dekker had napped probably four hours in the afternoon and was a bit of a grumpus when he woke up, so that made the evening a bit tougher, but Brady played with him a bit while mom and I finished peppernuts, iced sugar cookies, and made about five dozen gingersnaps.

Did I mention that my feet hurt? Worth it.

Everything is now home and inside. We had to rearrange the freezer to fit stuff in. I seriously need to make a list of what is all in there because I know I’m forgetting things. In my last post I talked about goals, and two of them were based on food and finances. I wonder how long we could go without buying food! I bet we could survive at least a month on the huge amount of meals we still have in our freezer, and all the extras in our pantry. Perhaps thats another idea I could try…

Time to soak in the tub with a snack. I’ve had so many sweets today, its time for some chips.

Thanks again, mama! I had a great day with you. Thanks for loving me and my kids. We sure love you back.