QOTW - Favorite Holiday Cookie

The multiples and more question of the week:

What is your favorite holiday cookie?

My favorite holiday cookie is the thumbprint cookie. For a few reasons. The jelly - you can make a huge variety of these simply by changing the flavor of jelly in them. The memory of baking these with family members - my Mom, my aunt, and my Grandma. Being able to smoosh your thumb into the cookie dough felt great when you may have been having a bad day and a little bit naughty since you're always told not to play with your food.

Here's the recipe. Try them and start a holiday baking tradition of your own.

1c butter, 2 eggs, 1/2c brown sugar, 1tsp vanilla, 1/4tsp salt, 2c flour ground nuts (for rolling).

Mix together butter, egg yolks, and remaining ingredients. refrigerate. Roll into 1 inch balls. Dip in egg whites and nuts. Bake350 for 5 minutes. Remove from oven and press thumb into center. Bake 8 minutes longer. Fill center with jelly.

QOTW: Holiday Tradtiions

The Multiples and More Question of the Week:

What are your family holiday traditions?

Tradition - def.: an inherited pattern of thought or action

So, although we seem to think that traditions mean always doing exactly the same thing it doesn't, by definition, necessarily mean that. Traditions can be altered yet still keep a similar pattern.

It's strange because the bugs are nearly two and a half years old and we haven't really begun any immediate family holiday traditions yet. Difficult to do so when your family status is up in the air. So we still practice our extended family traditions. Those traditions include traveling to our hometown and gathering together on Christmas Eve for dinner and opening gifts. Dinner always include fish and pasta - no meat. We exchange gifts with our extended family - aunts, uncles, and cousins. Christmas day is gifts from Santa in the morning and dinner mid-day - again with our extended family.

Update: J is back in our family. He took some time to get some help for his problem and seems committed to being a real part of our family. I don't know whether it will work or not. I don't know what the future holds. Not tomorrow and not ten years from now. But he is trying, and he loves the bugs, so one last chance he gets. I pray every day that he doesn't screw up again. I know that there is a big chance for failure in his situation however I've learned enough to know that we can only live one day at a time. Will we be able to piece the puzzle of our marriage back together? I don't know. I hope so. I never asked for any of this and having grown up in a divorced family I really want to try with whatever I have in me to make it work. But if it doesn't work at least I know that I did what I could.

So, beginning this year, since the bugs are at an age where they are beginning to realize what Christmas, and Santa, are we are going to try to begin to build our own family traditions. And, it won't matter in the future whether it's me, J, and the bugs or just me and the bugs...

My plan for our "new traditions" is: having Christmas Eve dinner in our home - and keeping the tradition of a dinner of seafood, attending a Christmas Eve church service, hot chocolate and reading "Twas the night before Christmas" before bed. Playing Santa when the bugs go to bed - I am sooo excited to do this! Opening gifts from Santa on Christmas morning and then traveling to Christmas dinner and gifts with our extended family.

A little bit of old and new.