Cookies

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

I know that there are some things I’m good at as a mom but showering our kids with baked goods is not one of them. Once, a dear friend of ours showed up at our door with a cake. The reaction in our house was “did someone have a birthday?” – to which Shawn I think was forever amused. Major holidays we have homemade dessert (that job thankfully the boys have taken over), birthdays I make everyone their requested cakes. But aside from that, the only other times our children get baked goods by mom, would be when we have guests for dinner or I’m hosting bookgroup.

Except … 5 times a year I make homemade chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, for the first day of school and for report card days. You would think I’m serving up some sort of decadent dessert the way our kids react. And Lord help me if I forget. With everything online here, the end of the marking period has trumped “report card day.” Mitchell and Walker’s report cards came in the mail, more than a week after the grades were up on GradeSpeed. A bit anti-climatic. This has led to confusion on my part – as I try to keep up with technology, which day is now supposed to be the day I make the cookies? The day the grades are posted? The day the report cards come in the mail? Well after the last marking period and one child’s report card not arriving until several days after the other two, I realized we needed to revamp the rules – the cookies will appear at the end of the marking period. With new guidelines established, the cookies were made (and devoured) quickly last week. With the aroma still lingering in the air but the plates all empty, I heard a sigh with the comment, “I guess we’ll have to wait another 10 weeks until this marking period ends before we can have these again.”

Which made me smile. Sometimes too much of a good thing dilutes the importance. One of the thought provoking ideas put forth in Authentic Happiness is pacing – pace what you love so that you can savor it while it lasts. I realized that without knowing it at the time, when I started this tradition 10 years ago, this is exactly what I’d done – maybe it was my mommy instinct that pulled through and realized less really can be more. Inspiring.