Mom's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ever since I became a mom and started baking, I wanted to make sure that I had the most awesome cookie recipes around. Thanks to the Akin Family Cookbook, I mastered peanut butter cookies, and oatmeal raisin cookies, but I could NEVER seem to get chocolate chip cookies just right.

I was becoming a bit nutty, kinda like Monica on "Friends" (yes, I relate to Monica the most, I am SOOOOO Monica). Oh come on, you've all seen the episode where Monica wants to be the mom who makes the BEST chocolate chip cookies?

I tried everything, Paula Deen, Emeril, and yes even Nestle Toll House (insert Phoebe's French voice here "Neslee TOOL Haus")

I had given up. I would just succumb and buy the store bought cookie dough. I would not be the mom who made the worlds best chocolate chip cookies.

Then I found it. It was in a little green recipe card holder, on one of those 3 x 5 cards, in my mom's handwriting. I happened upon it by mistake. I had NO idea that it was in there. All these years it was right under my nose, and I didn't even know it.

I should have known it though, anyone that knew my mom, knew that she was a fantastic baker. It was HER thing during the holidays. Even though I miss her SO much that she has gone on to be with the Lord, I'm so glad that I have some of her heritage to pass down to my kids.

My mom and I baking during the Holiday season.

Now, I'm going to share that recipe with you.  Why?  Because it's Christmas, we are all baking, and I've decided to start sharing some of my favorites with you all.  This is what I'm making today for a class party tomorrow.

Mom's Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

• 1 cup shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 12oz package chocolate chips

Cream together the shortening, sugar, brown sugar, egg and vanilla. Add dry ingredients. Spoon onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 10-12 minutes.

*Disclaimer, the batter will seem unusually greasy.  It's the shortening, but the come out fine, I promise.  Also mass consumption of delicious chocolate chip cookies MAY cause your waistline to expand.  You have been warned ;)

I promise you, they are amazing.  The secret all along is the shortening.  It just makes them light and fluffy.  Butter doesn't compare at all.  In fact, my oldest daughter who LOVES to bake used up all my shortening in the house.  I currently have all the ingredients measured out on my counter as I type this, but I refuse to substitute, so I'll be heading to the store in a bit to purchase some shortening!

Also greasing the cookie sheet is a MUST, any other time I made cookies and didn't grease the sheet, they stuck to the cookie sheet and were ruined.

I hope you try the recipe and I hope you enjoy it as much as my family does!

So I'm Graduating...well...maybe...

So I came home yesterday with my cap and gown in hand, and one last day of class left before finals.

So, I came in the house, put the cap and gown package on my end table, got the baby out of her car seat, and got Evie her juice etc....you know started doing mom things.  I completely forgot to go back and find a safer spot for that cap and gown.

When I walked by the end table in my living room today I noticed the cap and gown was missing.  I didn't give much thought to it because I knew my son picked up the living room yesterday (part of his chores), so I just figured it was in the pile of stuff on my dresser in my bedroom.

I was wrong.

We decided to take the kids swimming tonight at the Y, but when I realized that the cap and gown were indeed missing I started to panic.  My son had no clue what I was looking for, and when I explained it he swore he didn't know where it was.  I tried asking Evie where she may have placed it (you see she was building a nice fort/house out of blankets in the living room today so she could have easily taken it).  She had no clue what I was looking for either.

We organized a search party and started looking everywhere.  The cap and gown were nowhere to be found.  I patrolled the backyard praying NOT to find it in a chewed up pile of dog poo.  It wasn't there.  We looked through the trash, we looked through the recycling...we looked all over the kids rooms.  It.  Was.. Gone.

I started to feel hopeless because I know there was no way I'd ever get another cap and gown in time for the graduation.  We packed up in the car and headed for the YMCA.

Half way there my oldest shouts out "I think I know where it is mom!  I put it in the Twister game box!"

My husband and I glance at her and almost simultaneously say "Why on EARTH would you put it in there?"

She said "I thought it was the game board spinner."  (BTW it looks NOTHING like the Twister spinner)

"We would have NEVER found that." my husband said.  He was right.  One day we would have opened up that Twister box and found it, and I would of had an aneurysm. "Next time you dye your hair we are going DARK!"  my husband told our oldest.

So, tonight I came home and pulled the cap and gown out of the Twister game box.  I was going to just leave it in the package until Friday to make sure that it didn't get grape jelly on it or peed on by a dog, but I figured I'd open it up to try on my cap for a second.

To my horror, the tassel is missing.

You have GOT to be kidding me.

Happy Birthday Myah

May 3, 1999 there was a tornado going on in Oklahoma, but I was far away in Arizona giving birth to my oldest child.  I was young, only twenty one and I was scared to death.  I didn't know what to expect, and I sure as heck had no clue about how to be a mother, but nevertheless it was happening.

I was scheduled to be induced into labor that night at 9pm.  The previous night I started having contractions around 11pm.  They lasted off and on all night but never became regular.  I went into the hospital around noon the next day, but they sent me home saying I wasn't in active labor.  I went back to my mother in law's house and waited there.  Contractions got stronger and stronger, and by around 7pm they were getting closer and closer.  Finally we went into the hospital when my contractions were two minutes apart.  They admitted me and my first baby was born at 11:57pm that night.

She was so beautiful I just held her and cried.  She was simply amazing.

Today she is still just as beautiful and more amazing then I ever could of imagined.  God has given this child such a tender heart and sweet spirit.  She loves to help others, and when she loves, she loves deeply.  She wears her heart on her sleeve.

She is funny and smart and has a great sense of humor.  She loves clothes and make up and doing her nails, but she still loves to climb trees and go fishing with daddy.  She is so talented.  She loves to sing and she loves art.  She can write too.  She has written some of the most amazing stories for her age.  I can't believe how creative she is.

She loves converse shoes and skinny jeans. She knows how to sew more than mommy and she is a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen.  She recently just perfected her own recipe for home made brownies.

She loves Taylor Swift, but she still is so cool that she knows and loves the classics.  She can name ANY one of The Beatles songs.

She loves soccer and volleyball and said she wouldn't mind being a stunt woman when she grows up.  She is so totally cool it blows my mind.

She loves her family and is always willing to lend a hand a help.  She is a giver in the truest sense of the word.  She constantly makes me little gifts, cards and drawings and gives them to me just to brighten my day.  I love that God gave her the spirit of a giver.

God has granted me with an amazing relationship with my oldest daughter, and I love watching her become a woman.  As the teenage years are quickly approaching I'm still a lot like that twenty one year old woman, a bit naive  and a bit frightened.  I still don't know what to expect, but I do know one thing.  If the past eleven years have been any indication on how things will be, I look forward hopeful at what the upcoming years hold for her, and for me as her mother.  She is a joy to have and raise and I am truly blessed to be her mother.

Girls Weekend

I started writing this post several weeks ago and never got around to finishing it, however I feel that it deserves to be finished so here goes...

So my son and my hubby took off this weekend on a boys backpacking trip in the Ouachita Mountains, so it's just me and my girls this weekend.  I've been sick for the past three days and so are the two youngest, so we've pretty much just been laying in bed watching girlie movies and eating junk food.  Pretty much doing the same thing we'd be doing if we were not sick!

I really have some great kids, I mean REALLY they are truly the best, but right now I just want to talk about my oldest.  I know I spend a LOT of time on here going on and on about all the silly and cute things my kids do, but I don't spend enough time on here talking about just how wonderful they are, and my oldest truly is wonderful.  She constantly helps me with the little girls and the housework.  She loves to cook and help me out in the kitchen.  She loves girly movies and shows about fashion (she's the only one who actually enjoys watching "What Not To Wear" and "Say Yes To The Dress" with me).

She is turning into quite the young lady.  I love to do her  hair, her nails, her make up.  I love to be able to teach her all the fun things about becoming a lady.  I love watching girly movies with her.

I love her freckles, and how her face lights up when she smiles (and not the I'm smiling for a photo smile, but the REAL smile).  She has always had such a sweet loving spirit about her.  She is a giver.

The other day my memory flashed back to when she was around 5-6 years old.  She is on a video coming up to me giving me flowers she picked.  She says in her sweet baby voice "mommy I picked these for you."  I started bawling.  She is NOT a baby any more, she is a young lady, and she is gorgeous, and I am so very proud of her.  I'm so fortunate to be her mother, and I'm so fortunate to have a good relationship with her.  I pray it stays that way over the upcoming "teen" years.  I pray also that I can be a nurturing Godly mother to her, and give her everything she needs, but not everything she wants.

I love my kids with all my heart and everything that is in me (all four of them).  When I had my first and got pregnant with my second I wondered how I could possibly love another as much as I love the first, but your heart grows and makes double the space for that second one, and you love them just as much as the first, and so on and so on.  I thank the Lord for each one of my children, my son and my three beautiful girls.