Tomorrow starts two of my favorite days of the year. Every year my best friend and I take two days off work and do all of our Christmas baking. It’s a huge mess, a lot of work but we love it, and so do our kids. When my friend and I were newly divorced we lived together for a while and our kids are really good friends. Our baking days are something they look forward to all year long.
In the past we would send them off to school and get down to the serious work of mixing and baking. As a single mother those two days I spend just hanging out with my best friend were better than any vacation I could afford. We talked, we laughed, and we baked. We got a chance to talk about things that were bothering us and get another mother’s perspective on how to handle what our child was going through at that time. Those two days are very cheap therapy!
The kids would come home from school, bringing their friends, and we would have a house full of kids eating cookies. Things will be a little different this year, both of our kids have jobs, but they will still find a way to make it to the kitchen for fresh from the oven cookies.
As single moms taking those two days and channeling our inner Betty Crocker gave us just a moment of being stay at home moms, there when our kids leave in the morning and there when they come home in the afternoon, waiting with cookies and milk.
It also helped us get our gifts for neighbors and co workers done. It’s hard when people give you a gift and you really can’t afford to reciprocate, but fresh baked goodies are always welcome. We have some tried and true recipes and we try one or two new things every year. One thing never changes though, our kids look forward to it almost as much as we do.