Getting Ready for a Cookie Exchange

Last week (Thursday, Dec. 13th) the girls and I were invited to my friend Theresa's cookie exchange. I had a pretty busy week leading up to it and procrastinated in baking my cookies. I had planned to do it the day before, but had woke that morning with a migraine. It was the really bad kind that made me take prescription drugs (which didn't work) and those drugs make me nauseated. So I was out of commission all day...with a migraine AND nausea. I was in bed for nearly 24 hours. The Royal Offspring and The King were left to fend forthemselves.
It is never a good thing to leave 5 children unattended while their father is focused on working in the basement (he took the week off of work to finish up his loose ends). Needless to say, between the construction and the children, the house was destroyed. I won't bore you with photos, but the cleanest two rooms were the laundry room (above) and the kitchen (below).
The kitchen was not in very good condition to start baking. I had a lot of work to do around the house, including washing my Christmas Cookie Exchange Outfit, before I could even think about baking cookies for the exchange.
After I cleaned the kitchen, before I could bake my cookies, and while my clothes were washing, I had to be kind to The King. His birthday just happened to be the day I was in bed with the migraine. I felt bad that he didn't get a cake or his requested birthday meal. To top it off, he had to wait a day for his gift. (Not that he really cared--receiving gifts is not his thing.) No one knew where I had hidden his new set of knives. In fact I don't even think the children realized it had been his birthday. Instead of a party, he took four younger ones sledding, picking up their friends on the way. What a dad!
After I was kind to The King, I had to run to town to pick up kids from school, take one to piano and do a few errands. By the time I was able to start the cookies it was 4:00. I had to leave the house in TWO HOURS! I was frantically baking and preparing supper at the same time. Talk about multi tasking. Duchess knew I was in a pinch and stepped in to give me a hand. Maiden wanted to help, but she can't be trusted around the special ingredients. She is only allowed to stand by and watch. But every once in a while, I notice the faint scent of chocolate and peanut butter on her breath....that Maiden, she's a tricky one.
Duchess is my official candy unwrapper because she is the only one who doesn't eat the candy or lick her fingers in between unwrapping. Doesn't she do a nice job stacking them evenly? We made the Royal Family's favorite, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Cookies. A recipe from my dear friend Rapunzel. They are putzy little cookies to bake. First mixing the dough, then unwrapping all the candy pieces, rolling 1" balls of dough, bake for eight minutes, set for two minutes, press peanut butter cups into the cookies, immediately removing them from the mini muffin tins to cool. They are delicious and so worth the many steps involved. At 5:00 I realized I had forgotten to put my clothes in the dryer, so I did that. At 5:45 I got myself prettied up, changed the girls, packaged the cookies, changed into my Christmas Cookie Exchange Outfit (the jeans were not quite dry), and was out the door by 6:05. I was beginning to feel like Superwoman!

Here is Theresa, the hostess. She did such a nice job preparing for the party. The food and beverages were top notch. I was finally able to relax for the first time that day. Spending the evening chatting with friends...what a treat.
Then came time to load up on cookies. Mine are at the far side of the table on the left side. I still can't believe I got them done. By the time I left Theresa's, my container was filled with a variety of yummy cookies that didn't last through the weekend. I think next year I need to host a cookie exchange for large families who eat a lot of cookies. I think everyone will have to bring 12 dozen cookies--of two different varieties--24 dozen total. Yeah, that sounds good. Maybe then we will have them for more than two days. And please don't comment me and tell me to put them in the freezer, my kids are freezer hounds. They could sniff out a stray cookie hiding at the bottom of the chest freezer...under hundreds of pounds of chicken, beef, and lamb. Seriously.
Here we are, taking one cookie at a time, going round and round the table. A normal person might not get dizzy doing this. But let me tell you, going round and round is not something a recovering migraine sufferer should do.

I must point out the person at the left side of the photo wearing gray. That's Beckie. She is really pregnant and paranoid of cameras. She is an expert at avoiding them. This rare photo will be worth a lot of money one day.
There was only one mishap. Jayme's cookie platter landed on the floor. (Jayme is the one standing under the paper snowflake in the photo above.) Only an insanelycoldhearted blogger would grab a camera to document this tragic moment, and then say (outloud) "This will be great on my blog."

Note to self: Keep your blogging comments to yourself. In your excitement of discovering new and interesting blogging material, you could easily come across as an insensitive unfeeling person.