Everything good

A friend of mine asked for the recipe of our favorite cookies today. We call them our "Everything Good Cookies" because we put everything we love in them. It's just a basic oatmeal cookie recipe with a few tweaks.

1 c. butter, softened
3/4 c. packed brown sugar
1/2 c. granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 1/2 c. flour
3 cups old fashioned oats
1 c. chocolate chips
1 c. chopped walnuts
1 c. coconut

Mix everything together and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes, pulling them out before they look done (edges just barely turning golden brown) and letting them cool completely on the cookie sheet.

I was thinking how much my life as a mother is like these cookies. Cheesy, I know, but this is what I was thinking today with all my little kids running around me (no one had school today :) ). The recipe for these cookies was pretty good to begin with, but we needed to change some things for it to become our family's favorite. We didn't like cinnamon or raisins in our oatmeal cookies. We wanted them to be more buttery (ours is double the butter of the original recipe) for richer flavor. Nothing is complete here without chocolate. And walnuts and coconut put Kevin in seventh heaven.

Lately I've been reading and hearing lots of ideas from other people about what it takes to be a good and successful mother. And I appreciate all those ideas so very much. But ultimately, I have to decide what will work for my own family and what will make us the happiest. So I take the great ideas I hear and I use what I can and add a few specifics that make it work for us. I'm trying to make room especially for the things that we really love--family, music, French, friends, service, scriptures, Family Home Evening, just playing and laughing with each other, reading books. And the result is so great! Right now, my life is Everything Good.