Sat Night: Cookies & H5O

Babybops fell asleep early on Saturday --- he was out for the night by 7:30pm. With the hubby at work and a whole evening ahead of me I decided to clean out the pantry and came across this box of vanilla with a recipe for chocolate chip cookies:

I just happened to have a  bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips on hand along with all the other ingredients so I got to work on some cookies from scratch.

It takes me a while longer than expected when I bake cookies because I can't accommodate both cookie sheets in the oven at the same time. Also I only have one sad little wire rack, sad because its not really a wire rack but the toaster oven rack that I use as a cooling rack.

And to create more manual labor for myself, I stirred the chocolate chips in by hand because the electric stand mixer started bouncing like like construction truck when I added them in to the mix while beating at a slow speed. I know, such an amateur. So after nearly two hours I ended up with 36 of these:

And with this kicker: I gave up sweets and desserts for lent.

Exhausted from baking...I sat down to enjoy my favorite DVR show: Hawaii Five-O.

Yes, I admit I'm a fan. I love it. So judge me. I spent every weekday afternoon from 1-2 pm, cradling a sleeping newborn while watching re-runs of the original H5O on KDOC during the long hot summer of my maternity leave in 2009, craving a visit to the islands. I hoped to squeeze in a trip before going back to work. You can just imagine --- a vacation in Hawaii with a three-month-old. Cabin fever gave me crazy ideas. I was still nursing and or pumping every couple of hours but still thought it would be good for us all to "get out of our element." My friend put the kabosh on my plans with only a few words: "You're taking care of a newborn all day and all night at home, but if you go to Hawaii you'll be doing the same thing - in Hawaii."

Back to Saturday night and Hawaii Five-O. The original series was known to feature locals since it was filmed entirely on location in Oahu. The new series does a pretty good job of featuring Asian-American and Pacific Islander actors and extras, which is nice to see. I told my husband, "its an Asian show!" But when Nick Lachey and Vanessa Minillo guest starred in a recent episode the hubby was quick to point out that, "the show has already jumped the shark!" Sure, the dialogue can be hokey at times and as one reviewer noted about the new McGarrett, "no one talks like that." But the scenery sure is nice.

We didn't take that family vacation to Hawaii until Cam was 15 months old. And by that point, the year went by so fast I wish I could take it all back because it seemed like I blinked and my newborn was suddenly a toddler. When a new episode aired on a Monday night while we were in Maui the hubby said to me, "Now's your chance to watch Hawaii Five-O in Hawaii." I said to him, "Watching Hawaii Five-O is for when I can't be in Hawaii. I don't need to watch it when Hawaii is just outside on my balcony!"

Aloha! 

~ Sheree