Many years ago, my mom and I started a tradition of getting together for one day every December and baking cookies. We think we started doing this around 1990 or 1991, but we can’t remember exactly. For the past few years it’s been a half-hearted effort (when we even tried at all), since having little kids around made it pretty difficult.

Now that the girls are all in school, we have re-instituted Cookie Day. My parents came over from Tampa on Tuesday afternoon; mom and I made our shopping list and went out Tuesday evening to get everything we needed. Wednesday morning around 8:45 we started baking. We finished around 4:00.

Click on the picture to see a larger version of the nearly 29 dozen cookies and 8 pounds of candy we made. Not pictured are almost 4 dozen chocolate-dipped dried apricots that we did as an afterthought. We set a personal record for our most productive Cookie Day ever.

Put up the Christmas tree in the morning. Went swimming with the girls in the afternoon. ‘Nuff said!

Yes, another bug story.

The girls and I found this one in the backyard yesterday when they were going out to play. Those squares on the mat are about 1 cm each, so it’s about 6 cm long, including the legs, and looks a lot like a maple tree seed (whirlybird) or a piece of mulch. I think it’s some kind of a grasshopper or katydid, but I couldn’t find anything exactly like it with a quick Google. It wasn’t moving very much–it was a cool afternoon (around 70) and it was in the shade.

The girls didn’t want to go anywhere near it, and neither did I. But Ellie and Micah decided to go out and play anyway, just staying away from it. Bethany eventually got brave and joined them. A few minutes later, she yelled to me through the open window, “Mom, can we kill it?” My immediate answer was, “NO! Don’t kill it!” Not five seconds later, Bethany starts screaming, “She killed it, she killed it!” It took me a few minutes to get things sorted out, but as far as I can figure, Micah squished it with a big fat piece of sidewalk chalk. I’m not sure if she walked up and did it by hand, or just had a lucky toss. Either way, there was the poor bug, not moving, with a piece of chalk on its legs. I figured it was a goner and decided to leave it for “Daddy” to investigate/deal with.

When I saw it a couple of hours later, the words of Monty Python came to me: “I’m not dead yet!” Well, by that time it was, but the chalk had not dealt the final blow. No, that came later, when it tried to crawl away from the piece of chalk that was pinning its rear legs to the mat. Uh… let’s just say the chalk won that tug-o’-war. Ick.

At Bethany’s brand-new elementary school, there is no gymnasium. Not even a cafeteria/gym, like my elementary school had when I was a kid. No, here PE classes are held outdoors. Even in the rain, there’s a large covered area where they can run around (as long as there’s no lightning). But not this week. Both PE classes and recess had to be indoors. Why, you ask? LOVEBUGS! Yes indeed, the lovebugs are too thick for the kids to play outdoors at school. Growing up, we would have recess canceled for rain or extreme cold (like below zero). But never for bugs! And gym classes were held… in the gym! It was a treat in the early fall and late spring to be able to go outside for PE.

The bugs haven’t been quite as bad as either a year ago or last spring. So far. Maybe we’ll get off easy this time. Still, when entering Publix there is the nasty smell of burning lovebugs from the industrial-sized bug zappers in the entrance. Ewww……