New Year

Well, it is a new year! Love the whole new year new fresh start. Am looking forward to many new experiences and new events this year. Looking to do better with our budget now that Christmas is over. Why is it that it seems no matter how much you save, it just isn't enough. We have made a plan about next year and I plan to stick with it. We did much better this year than we have done in the past. Hopefully next year will be better as well.



My hope is to be a more patient person and to interrupt less. My mind always seems to be going really fast and I always seem to be three steps/thoughts ahead of everyone else and just interrupt. I heard a teacher I work with refer to it as "brain robbing" the other day when a student blurted out the answer when it was another student's turn. I am going to try so hard to not interrupt.





Start classes in a week. A bit nervous about that but not abnormally so. I have started many a new class in the last couple years (usually one a semester) but took the fall semester off so I am taking two this semester. Worried about juggling classes, doing my best teaching, working on committees (another new thing this school year), and being a good mother and wife. Don't know how everything will get done but bet I will utilize all but a couple hours of the day (hey, a girl has to sleep sometime, right?!?). I would share a new pic but I haven't uploaded in a while. Will have to soon as the camera has almost 400 pics on it (oops). So, old photo it is. I think it sums up the Holiday season pretty well.

Fabulous Creamy Pumpkin Cheescake

So, not the least bit good for you and I usually make health recipes but this was a great cheescake recipe that everyone loved!

1 1/2 cups finely crushed ginersnaps
1/2 cup finely chopped pecans
1/4 cup melted butter
4 pkg. (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
Dash ground cloves

PREHEAT oven to 325°F. Mix ginger snap crumbs, pecans and butter; press firmly onto bottom and 1 inch up side of 9-inch springform pan.

BEAT cream cheese and 3/4 cup of the sugar with electric mixer until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition just until blended. Remove 1-1/2 cups of the batter; place in small bowl. Stir remaining 1/4 cup sugar, the pumpkin, and spices into the remaining batter. Spoon half of the pumpkin batter into crust; top with spoonfuls of half of the reserved plain batter. Repeat layers. Cut through batters with knife several times for marble effect.
BAKE 1 hour 10 min. or until center is set. Cool completely. Refrigerate 8 hours or overnight.

GAMES (and a horrified mother)

Went to the store to possibly buy a couple of games for the kids (my niece and daughter) and OH MY GOSH!!! who spends $30 on a game for a hand held gaming system??? My husband picked out the gameboy advance (instead of the ds given the stylus) and I had no idea what games cost. So, my sister-in-law had been looking for Nintendogs: Dalmation for my niece and had not been able to find it anywhere, I live in an area with more stores and eb games had it. I didn't ask the price (more fool I) and told the kids lets go get it. My daughter had a gift card for Walmart she was going to use for a game but said that she would trade it for a game at eb games. $65 bucks later we left the store with two games, an amazed me, and an irate two year old (she wanted a mighty dragon game but has no gaming system and it is not like her cousin or sister would share with her). Came home, told my husband who thought it was about the funniest thing ever, and vowed to never enter another such store for at least the next year!

Hats

Here is a pic for my Aunt who made the hats for my kiddos! Thank you so much, they love them! Guess I made up for the lack in posts for the last couple of days. Lots to say all at once :)

A newly finished . . .

keychain. A bit on the large side but well loved by me. I think this is the first thing I have made to keep for myself. Buttons are Foofalaa, fuzzy fubons are Heidi Swapp, ribbon is American Crafts (I think), rubbon on kiddos pic is American Crafts, ink is colorbox, and i can't figure out what the paper is (looks perhaps We R Memory Keepers--the texture says chatterbox to me). All this is mounted on a Maya Road coaster.

Vacation

Vacation does not feel like vacation used to feel like; I do not know if this is because I am an adult know and just have not reflected on vacation in a long time or because schedules just get more full and more full. Between work I brought home, Christmas, extended family things, and keeping up with housework I do not feel as if this has been a vacation. I go back to work on Tuesday and my to do list is just as long as it was last Friday. I haven't been lazy or lax--the list just keeps growing (faster then I cross things off).

On a good note, I spent time with some of my in laws today. I love that my kids know their cousins. We don't connect as much as I like but it is still significantly more than what I had as a child and that makes me really really happy. We spent lots of time play and lots of time "helping" Gwen share as that is not her strong suit. Gwen was particularly stingy today and didn't even want her cousins near her brother's toys! One of the cousins is going to spend a couple of days with us and then we will bring her home. I am going to brave coffee in the morning with four kiddos and then we might go look for a game that particular cousin has been wanting.

On a better note, I worked for almost two hours tonight and an hour or so this morning so I managed to make a major dent in my work to do list. All I have left is entering grades into the gradebook (which is not as easy as it sounds because I have to write descriptions of each assignment and correlate each assignment to a standard in writing--I will be so happy when the new gradebooks are up and running in another month), some paperwork, some photocopying, compiling materials, and I need to track down a rubric. Very nice . . . maybe three or so hours left.

So close to having time for scrappy stuff. A project I want to do with wood at various depths is waiting, mulling in my head. I have considered pics and wood and papers . . . now just to pull it all together. Also have a couple of pics to scrap (like a couple hundred) soon, I have been thinking about them. And, my faaaaaaaaaaaaaavorite, a mini album. Picked up papers the other day at the scrap store in Augusta. Can't wait to use the stuff. Went in looking for embellies, came out with $30 in paper (thanks for the gift cards Mom and Grammie).

a new blog

here it is, a new blog. hopefully i will use this blog a bit more regularly than the last blog. i am wanting to document the life of me & my family as well as remember the world around me. it would be fabulous to be able to look back at a year ago and see where we were and what we were doing. it would also be great to share a bit of my family with the world and our daily life with our family which is spread out.