Baby 5: Week 18

How Far Along: 18 Weeks (22 weeks to go!)

How I'm Feeling: I thought for sure I was having a HUGE resurgence of nausea... Turns out it was the lead in to a wicked cold. I thought for sure it was just pregnancy congestion, but by the looks of the kids it was at least mildly contagious. None of them have runny noses, but everyone seems very tired, and have red eyes. Poor darlings. I'm struggling to stay up enough to be Mommy while Daddy is at work. I'd blame the general lack of cleanliness of my house on the cold, but let's face it, that's just normal for me.

What I'm Thinking: Today, I'm holding my babies a lot closer. I'm grateful that my life hasn't been touched by personal tragedy, and that my kids don't understand what little pieces of the news they've accidentally overhead. I've had two sleepless nights, up praying and crying and shocked over the lives lost in Connecticut this week. Pregnancy hormones are not helpful at times like this, so all I can do is pray pray pray for the hurting families involved and hold mine a little tighter.

What I've Done This Week:  I did my 2nd cookie exchange this past Monday at the party for our Young Parents Alpha class. What a fun time! I also stayed out until about 1am so I could see the Hobbit opening night. Every since then I've been sick, but I managed to squeeze in a meeting with a new parishioner to welcome them to our parish, and lead a Pro-Life Holy Hour on Saturday which was much needed and remarkably well attended. I woke up barely able to move form the sick, and so congested I can barely breathe, so I'm keeping my sick to myself and staying in as long as it takes to get better.

What I Hope To Do Next Week: We have a busy week ahead. My friends and I will be collecting the gifts for the family we adopted together with hopes to deliver it very soon. I also have to get a bit of Christmas cooking done right away as I give Tourtiere to family members for their Christmas Eve dinner (a family tradition from my childhood I'm happy to spread!). I also hope to recover from this awful cold.

Cookie Exchange

Now that we've hit Advent, all of sudden a bunch of cookie exchanges are gearing up. For those who don't know what a cookie exchange is, let me first say that they are awesome. Not enough info? Fair enough. So basically what happens is a bunch of folks sign up to participate, each offering to make a different kind of cookie. You make a dozen cookies for each other person who will be participating (and a dozen for yourself to if like me, you could never have enough cookies). You get together, and then exchange your dozens of cookies for however many dozen different kinds of cookies from all your exchange buddies. So, if I'm in an exchange with 7 other people, I get to come home with 7 dozen completely unique batches of cookies when I only had to get the ingredients to make 7 dozen of one kind. If you're like me and you've really only perfected one or two kinds of cookies, you come out of this a total winner. It's also really cheap too because you're not buying 7 or 8 different cookies worth of ingredients.

My first exchange is this week, so I'll be sharing the spoils of my labour once they're all in. Suffice is to say I'm over the top with glee. My family is going to have loads of variety snack wise this year, because I'm going to have no less than 10 dozen different cookies in my freezer waiting for their turn to shine. Cookies exchanges can be make even more awesome if you get your friends to include recipes for the cookies too!

Since I can't actually give all my readers a dozen cookies this Advent, let me offer you the recipe for my favourite cookie exchange treat! Straight from my Grammie's cookbook, the ever famous Molasses Crinkles!

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter/margarine
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

Cream your butter, then add the sugar and mix that in. Add the rest of the ingredients in the order given and mix them in. Your batter will be a little stiff. Roll pieces of the batter into balls and then flatten them with a fork or cool potato masher that has been dipped in flour (otherwise the fork/masher will stick to your cookie, no fun). Bake at 350F for 10 minutes, or until they're golden brown. Don't eat them right away, as they will burn your mouth. True story. Resist, my friends. Resist.