Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies with Maple Cinnamon Glaze.

Yes, you read that right. And treehuggies? You might really want to skip this entire post, mmkay? ;-)

And here's a picture to prove that I really made them.



The idea was not mine originally. My super-cool friend a_rockett created these cookies a few weeks ago, and you can read more about her inspiration here. She also has more pictures (better ones!), and you can find her recipe at that link.

Believe it or not, these are surprisingly good. Everyone at Runza loved them today, and A.J. nearly flipped out as I was packing them to take, afraid that I wouldn't leave any at home for them (I kept aside just over a dozen).

Thanks so much for sharing, Andrea! :-)

( More of my pictures. )

Every holiday needs a superhero!

Christmas cards have continued to trickle in these past few days. Among those, we've received cards from kristchan, cateyes25, flopbrain, and _stacy. The card from Kris plays music and comes complete with a website (no, really!). The boys thought that was very cool.

But the card from _stacy came in a package that warned me not to open it without the boys. So we opened the package together, and each pulled out a soft, wrapped gift with his name on it. I opened the card (finding the spiffy picture of Mr. Cole on the envelope!), and I also found a trinket for myself: a Hermione LEGO® keychain! Inside each of the boys' packages, they found these:


Superhero capes!

Personalized superhero capes! What a cool idea! The boys were instantly in LOVE with them, and they put them on quickly. What followed next were several minutes of superhero mayhem, lots of yelling and running around, and several flicks of "Spidey hands."

Thank you so much, Stacy! What a FANTASTIC idea! :-)

( More of the mayhem under here. )