*chortle*

So yesterday I'm sitting in the kitchen after breakfast, working on stuff for this payroll management system switch for work, thinking I should really get the Fries dressed before my folks arrive, and just listening to them chatter.

Large Fry is singing. (Sadly, I think she's picked up her father's vocal "style.") It doesn't take too careful of a listen to realize she's belting out one of the songs Disney's Beauty and the Beast. I wish I could remember now which one. (Had I blogged about it yesterday when it happened, I wouldn't have this problem.)

Five minutes later, after nearly nonstop Beauty and the Beast, I hear this:

"Simba, come back! Come back, Simba!"

The incongruity of pairing Beauty and the Beast with The Lion King just cracked me up.

I simply must share my diabolical brilliance with you all.

Although, it's not entirely MY diabolical brilliance. Hubby helped.

So about a week after Thanksgiving, my siblings and I (and assorted spouses) get an email from my dad. Here he waxes eloquent about how worn out Mom was after coordinating Thanksgiving dinner for 28 people. And he opines that Christmas is coming, which is going to be nearly as exhausting, and he exhorts us to do whatever we can to help.

Being the good oldest child, Type-A personality kid that I am, I volunteer to be cookie fairy. Cookies I figure I can do a lot better (and easier) than volunteering to, y'know, do the main cooking. Or even volunteer to supervise the pork roast. I am not the greatest culinary artist in the family, but I can bake, and bake well.

Hubby's a little less than thrilled with this, because he knows me. When it comes to Christmas goodies, I...well...I tend to go overboard. (See any previous LJ entry that was made post-Christmas-Bakefest with Janelle, if you need more proof.) I love baking and making goodies simply because I am so good at it. And Hubby knew that once I got started, I would then want to ship packages of Christmas yummies hither and yon, and I was seriously in danger of burning my end at both candles.

Well.

I had asked for requests when I volunteered my oven. Dad really likes the Peanut Butter Blossoms. You know, the peanut butter cookies that have a Hershey's kiss smooshed into them as soon as they come out of the oven. Knowing how short I was going to be on time (I still baked and created for twelve hours), I opted to just buy the mix that you add egg, water and oil to. I bought four bags...and made them all. I bought a big bag of Hershey's kisses.

As it turned out, I ran short on kisses.

What to do, what to do.

Just make peanut butter cookies, I suppose.

That's when Hubby's first brainstorm strikes. Why not put chocolate chips into the center of the peanut butter cookies? We can tell Dad that the chips shrunk when we washed them in hot water or something.

I realized that I still had some milk chocolate & peanut butter morsels from the brownies I'd made a week before. I dumped 'em out, picked out the milk chocolate ones and put the peanut butters back in the bag. We'll use these instead of semi-sweet chips, I announced.

As I'm getting ready to roll the dough into balls for our shrunken-chips cookies, Hubby looks at me, again with that look of evil brilliance in his eyes. He grabs a pinch of cookie dough and rolls it into a very small ball. "Better yet...make 'em THIS size!"

I smirk, set aside the three balls of dough I've already made, and start rolling smaller balls. I end up with two dozen by the end of the dough.

I watch them carefully, since I have no idea how long they'll take to bake. I pull them out about four minutes later, and carefully stick little milk chocolate morsels on top of each cookie.





Aren't they cute?



These are the normal-sized ones.



A size comparison.

I'm debating whether or not I should give them to Dad when he comes to visit tomorrow, or wait until Christmas.

*snicker*

I'm not dead yet....

December is just probably our busiest month out of the year, and that was before instant parenthood.

So I give you a smattering of our adventures in the last few weeks:

~Medium Fry got a spanking while Gramma and Boppa visited, because she climbed up on her Little Tikes table (which she knows she's not supposed to do), and started pulling cd cases off the stereo shelf, tossing them to the floor, and was probably aiming for the body of the stereo next. Small Fry came over as I was holding Medium, reminding her that I love her, and said, "Cwy?" I said, yes, she's crying because she got punished. Then she went back into the living room, looked at my dad, and said, "Bad." Dad's eyes nearly bugged out, trying not to laugh.

~Uncle Hubby got tired of "girlie" movies like Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella, so he popped in the VHS of The Lion King and it's been nearly a daily ritual since then.

~I waited too long to empty the lint screen on the dryer, because I do so much laundry that I forget to clean it with each load, and so when I went to clean it yesterday, most of it fell off the screen and back down into the dryer. I couldn't fish it out. So I ended up leaving a load of damp clothes in the dryer overnight, since I wasn't about to run it when it stopped drying efficiently and was getting really hot and just go to bed. So I started it this morning, peered outside at the vent, and determined quickly that I should go clean out the vent itself. On the freaking coldest morning of the year. I fished out a bunch of lint, got steam in my face for my trouble (thankfully not too hot; just hot air from the dryer hitting the frigid air outside), and nearly froze my toes off. (They are still chilly.)

~I spent most of Saturday baking. And I forgot to eat. Until Hubby ordered pizza, and I realized I'd had a Dr Pepper and assorted finger licks throughout the day as I baked. Yes, I know. Not smart.

~I realized I thought I was done with my Christmas shopping, but I'm really not, since I had the sudden reality-smack that, not only do I need to have presents for people from us, I need to have presents for people from the kids as well. Yay me. A little strategic mental reshuffling of presents already purchased fixed that problem, and I just have to find something for my three-month-old nephew now, from both us and the kids. I think.

I now need to go get munchkins dressed for the day, and get cracking on work as much as I can...it's payroll week, and I'm sure the boss will want to do everything by tomorrow!