Visions of sugar plums...snickerdoodles... and fish?

Is it bad that in one breath I tell my son that Christmas is all about celebrating Jesus Birthday and in the next breath I threaten that if he isn't good Santa won't bring him toys?

We hade a bake sale at work to raise money for a local area food drive that is happening next week... I've just started advertising but If I have any ad revenues in November I'll donate them to the local food bank that benefits from this drive (so get click happy, people).
Thursday night I made several new recipes all from the book "101 things to do with a Cake Mix"

With cake mixes (and a few ingredients, eggs, oil, butter, vanilla, etc.) I made Chocolate Chip Cookies (note if you do this - don't use salted butter! ick!) Snickerdoodles, Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Muffins and Cinnamon Oatmeal Raisin Cookies... At 10:20 p.m. I decided that I had done enough for one night and stopped short of making Brownies too... Even with Copper and Tater-tot sampling liberally before they went to bed I still brought a lot of stuff for the bake sale.

When we did a sale in May for Relay for Life we raised almost $500. I'm blessed to work in a very generous community! Turns out we did even better this time - topping $400 before noon and breaking $500 for the day!

It's frustrating though to have spent one of Copper's nights off baking all night on Thursday, and last night I had a Chamber of Commerce Fish Fry that I have to go to (I'm on the Board of Directors)... and today he went back on shift... I try to only be busy when he's at work... but that just doesn't seem to work since his shifts keep changing! We won't have the schedule that covers Christmas until the second week of December!!!

The fish fry was a military appreciation thing (we live and work pretty close to a big military installment). The officers who attended were so kind and gracious. Many went to the kitchen as they were leaving to personally thank the Volunteer Fire Fighters who had done all of the cooking for us. (they also responded to two dispatches and had the meal on the table on time! They are amazing!)

Yesterday was Crazy Friday at Tater-tot's school (daycare). They wore pajamas to school... he looked so cute in his CARS PJs and CARS tennis shoes... so matchy, matchy...

While I was at the fish fry he had some good "Daddy time." And since he's learning about police officers at school I'm sure there were tons of great things he said that I missed... maybe Copper will remember a few gems for me to share with everyone...

Speaking of Copper, he moved our computer into his 'man cave' this week so I have to invade his territory of bulletproof vests and guns and badges to blog... don't even get me started!

Fox