To borrow a phrase from my favorite non-friend or family blog. :) The only way to get through a bad situation sometimes, is to just laugh. And that my friends, is how the children and I survived the annual Valentine cookie delivery debacle this year.
First, as you can read in my last few posts, it was a jam-packed weekend. There was stuff going on constantly. And I am not a likes-stuff-going-on-constantly kind of gal. I hate that frazzled feeling, and make a conscious effort not to get that way. Meaning, I try and pick and choose what I am going to participate in and don't feel a compulsion to go on lots of outings and get-togethers with the other moms in my area. Even though I always have a good time when I do go, I just can't take the stress of trying to attend EVERYTHING, you know?
But I also love to celebrate holidays. Love making traditions with my family, love spending time with them creating memories. So I was in quite a pickle this particular weekend. There was nothing I was really willing to skip, but that meant I had to step it up about three notches. All that to explain that I was already kind of on edge before we even got to the family tradition part of the weekend. I even thought, for a mere few seconds only, that maybe we would just skip the whole cookie making/decorating/delivering part of our celebrations. But I knew the kids were really looking forward to it, and had been discussing how many they were going to eat themselves, and what choice of sprinkles they wanted to use for days. So I just took a deep cleansing breath, harnessed my inner perfect mother, and smilingly entered the fray.
Making sugar cookies with 5 eager young helpers is always an arduous task, even on the best of days. So I just quietly whipped up the dough without telling anyone, and then called them one at a time to come cut out their cookies. This was a serious bit of inspiration, I have to say. I was able to have some one on one time with each child where we chatted about the friends they were making the cookies for, and whatever other trivia they wanted to share with me. Also, I only have two baking sheets, so I was able to keep them constantly rotating, without too much cookie backlog.
After each kid had cut out their allotment of dough, I rolled out the rest and went to town cutting out heart after heart after heart after heart. :) I wanted to make some for a few of our neighbors, as well as for the baptism that was occurring the next day. Using the cold outside weather, the cookies were cooled off and ready for frosting rather quickly, which was great, seeing as how we were slowly running out of daylight hours. I generally like to use pink frosting for obvious reasons, but had neglected to buy any food coloring. Duh! I had, however, remembered to buy a rather dizzying array of sprinkles to put on top of the frosting. We had flowers, hearts, and small dots in about every shade of pink and red that exists. The girls, especially, were in heaven.
Each child got a bowl of frosting, a butter knife, and a selection of sprinkles. Then I stepped back and watched the sugar fly. Even Alexandra did surprisingly well decorating her cookies, although I only gave her two, and she ate them both herself. :) The other kids kept asking how many cookies they could eat. I told them they could have as many as they wanted, knowing they would get sick of all that sweetness after about 2 or 3, and they did. But the joy they got from the freedom of being able to eat "as many as they wanted!" was pretty long lasting.
When all the cookies were as beautiful as possible, we set them aside to let the frosting harden for a bit. Plus, we needed to sign the accompanying cards. I had each older child write their own greeting and even Noah was able to sign his name legibly for his friends. Alexandra scribbled on one for our neighbors as well. So cute! We cut out the colored tissue paper and ribbon, and started loading up our plates. I had the kids think of each person individually and count how many people were in their family, and then put that number of cookies on one plate. We then placed the card for that person on the plate as well, so we wouldn't get mixed up later. Then I wrapped up all the plates, attached the cards and we were ready to make our deliveries. This is where it really got interesting.
First, we had twelve plates of cookies. But only 5 pairs of hands to hold them all. Alexandra doesn't count, and in fact, someone has to hold her hand going down the stairs, so we really only had 4.5 pairs of hands. Nick and Sarah were roped in to carrying extra plates, which resulted in one of the plates falling to the ground. They were rather worried the cookies were ruined, but I peeked in the tissue paper, and everything was intact. Hurray! We all piled in the car, with children's laps and the front passenger seat piled high with purple and pink tissue paper lumps, and drove off to the main part of the village.
Now, I had been to about half of these houses before, dropping the kids off for playdates. And I had addresses for everyone else. Plus, the town isn't that big, how hard could it to be to find these places? Famous last words, right? You see, our little town was so little for so long, that they only put up street signs about 10 years ago. Before that, everyone just knew where everyone else lived. Or they had names for the houses, rather than addressed. "Oh, yes, they live in the Schmitte." So when they finally got around to naming the streets, they used all the old, familiar phrases, rather than any sort of rhyme and reason. Unterdorfstrasse suddenly turns into Breitenstrasse, and then goes around a curve and becomes Oberdorfstrasse. And the numbering of the houses is even worse. 8,10,and 12 on one side, 43,45, and 47 on the other. Huh?
I don't even remember how many times we parked the car, piled out, walked across icy slippery sidewalks, only to get to the front door and realize the name on the bell didn't match with who we wanted to give the cookies to. Fortunately, we always looked before we rang. "Oh, hi, sorry, no, these cookies aren't for you actually. See ya later!" But I was really impressed with how upbeat I was keeping it, just laughing with the kids at the absurdity of it all. And then it got just hysterical when I was trying to turn into a kind of tight parking space and proceeded to bang into the giant metal trash can on one side. Then when I backed up, I kind of dragged it with me for a bit. I just stopped the car, put my head down on the steering wheel and laughed. The kids were kind of scared, and I didn't want their memories of this day to be ruined by that one incident. So I chose to make light of the situation, and told them that at least they would never, ever forget this Valentine's delivery. And the small dent and scratch were just below, but on the same panel, as another scratch on the car, so we would have had to get the whole thing painted eventually anyway, right?
After 1 1/2 hours, we finally made it back home. Yes, it really took that long to deliver 12 plates of cookies, and no, we were not chatting it up at every house. It just took that long to find them all. We tossed the kids in the bath, and I wisely decided to skip project night at a friends that night. I was just too worn out from the day's events, and I still had the real holiday the next day to prep for. Feel the love, baby!