I’ve been kinda bad about updating… I do apologize about that. I haven’t had anything that exciting to say, or when I do, I forget to post them! So… here you go…You know, the usual info dump:

–Health: is the same. Ups and downs and the monthly doctor visits, experimenting to try and successfully make me a healthier, happier, and headache pain free person someday. *cross fingers*

–Jobs: Jared and I are both extremely grateful for our jobs… especially with the economy’s recent pitfalls. Jared’s company has taken some hits, unfortunately, but at least he still has his job. I also do love my job, but applied to the high schools in the area and am hoping to hear back from some of them in the next month or so (district politics).

–Teaching 7th grade: is going. Actually, there are some good things going on at work. We’ve been reading The Outsiders as a class, and that has been a huge success with the kids. I read it to them and then pause and talk about it with them. They have really enjoyed the book- it’s been a really motivating factor for the whole classtime. 🙂 That definitely makes me happy. Downside has been preparing for the HUGE Texas state writing exam this Tuesday… Tuesday will not be a fun day. Oh well.

Cooking: is adventurous. I’ve taken a liking to Rachael Ray. 🙂 I know, I know, some of you may not like her, but I’m a huge fan now, and most of her recipes are easy and affordable–I’m just a lot slower than she is when it comes to the finished product. 🙂 Jared likes the variety too, so that’s always good. However, I’ll be honest- I don’t cook every night. Working with these 7th graders from 8:00-4:30 can be exhausting, and sometimes I just come home and we have leftovers or cereal!

Housing: We are hoping to get a house sometime this summer…We’ve been saving up and are keeping our eyes peeled for the homes in the right areas for the right price. We will just see!

Anyways, that’s all for now, folks!

So here we go. I am on some new medication and the doctor said specifically to take it in the morning, not at night, but that means weird side affects come on strongest during the middle of the day. So I am home sick during church again… I am hoping this will pass by Tuesday (hooray for 3 day weekends!)

As I was playing with the camera, I found some fun pictures other than the characters, so I am going to share those too. First up, some Christmas pictures!

I bet you can’t guess what’s in that ginormous box that Stevie’s checking out. 🙂

Then…. The Truck! This is our new monster friend that I can hardly climb into (because it’s so large). Dodge Ram 1500 4×4. Guess Jared spent some quality time with it one day when I wasn’t paying attention to take these pictures. 😉

I like that second one so much because it looks like it is backing that naughty car up against the wall. 🙂

Lastly, my students’ projects. These are SO neat. I love these things. The pictures don’t show them as well as I had hoped they would, but take my word for it, most of these are so neat in real life, and are the size of real people. 🙂 The kids had to look up quotes on how their characters looked and passed those off to me BEFORE they could start on the character.
Meet Stargirl- Made with bulletin paper, colored pencils, and real cloth for her clothes (I love her- she might just be my favorite)

Then there’s Bella, from Twilight, drawn with pencils,

Then Annabeth, from The Lightning Thief (with REAL JEANS!!! LOVE IT!), Sunny, from Series of Unfortunate Events:

Then Jacob Black, literally 6’5″ and very pretty. I told the girls they made him look so good I could almost kiss him!

Then Jasper… and I love the details they did- I tried to do a close up of his arm (think of Eclipse, Twilight fans!)

Then couple of characters at once: Alice, (cloth clothes and yarn hair) from Twilight Saga; Massie (Cloth clothes and yarn hair) from The Clique Series; Tyson from The Lightning Thief Series, and Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter Series. And another Alice…

And last but not least, Gilderoy Lockhart, from Harry Potter. I love that they put glitter on his teeth to make his “gleaming smile,” as the quotes say. 🙂

Aren’t my kids so clever? Most of them did their best work. 🙂

Well, Christmas break was great, and certainly not long enough. Jared was amazing. He made Christmas day wonderful. He got me so many wonderful gifts, but the biggest surprise of all (literally and figuratively) was the digital piano he got me.

It plays and looks like an upright piano, but basically plugs in and is electric and all that. It’s so neat. I am quite rusty and am warming up again. It was such a big present… I felt so undeserving of the gift, but I have been trying to make use of it as much as possible!

Then the week of New Years, Jared’s family came down to stay with us and see Austin, kind of like what my family did for thanksgiving. It was a fun time to have them here, Sunday-Friday. We stayed at home a bit more, but still showed them a little around the town and our various work places. Naturally, Stevie worked his Iggy magic and they all loved him too, especially Jared’s dad. 🙂 We had a good time with them here, and we were sorry to see them go.

Since then, I’ve just been dealing with my headaches and school and grading. I took today off actually for a doctor’s appointment and I was hoping to get into some other stuff too, but I’ll just do some extra grading instead. Blech. Having the grading periods in six six week periods is really hard, instead of four 9 week periods. I like the 9 weeks better, personally. It doesn’t seem as rushed.

On the upside, tomorrow I am going to bring my camera to the school and take some pictures of my classroom with some of the projects the kids did for characterization- I think you will all be so impressed with my 7th graders!!!!!

In my junior high French class, I had the most wonderful teacher, Mademoiselle Wilson (I think her name is Lisa Zilch now). She is one of the reasons I wanted to be a teacher; she was probably one of my most favorite teachers in the entire world. During Christmas time, to show how the holiday is mostly traditionally celebrated in France, we would do parties and bring traditional food like quiche, crepes, and Buche de Noels (Yule Log cakes).

My mother has been purging the house of most of my stuff now and sending it to me, and sent me a French Christmas packet with the recipe a couple of months ago. I was wondering what to do with it until the other day, some of Jared’s work friends decided to put together a potluck for tomorrow night. I decided to be adventurous and here’s how it went down:

First you make the cake part. It’s a sponge cake baked in a jelly roll pan really flat. Then you roll it in a towel to cool, then unroll it, frost it, then roll it up again:

Then I set to work on the Meringue Mushrooms. Apparently, they are traditional. And since I’m all about doing a traditional French recipe from scratch, I made the candy mushrooms (NOT REAL MUSHROOMS!!!):

While those baked for 40 minutes, I cuddled with Stevie, who felt very neglected, and then frosted the cake part of the “log.”:

Looking pretty log-y! However I was getting pretty tired, so I cheated and just did normal frosting- it still tasted pretty good when I licked my fingers at the end ;):

Then, the mushrooms were out of the oven, so I put the pieces together, dusted the tops with cocoa (it looked pretty!), and stuck them to the cake. Then I dusted the cake with a thin layer of “snow” (powdered sugar):

Voila! There you have it. I wish I had something pretty and green to garnish it with… but this will have to do for now. Not too bad for a first try… hopefully the people at the party will enjoy it!

Har-har.

Two posts in two days! It’s only because I am not feeling well. 🙂 Jared was teasing me yesterday because I had already read so much. He called his mom to chat and told her that I was on my fourth book and had read over a thousand pages and I had only been on break 2 days, and I started to deny it. Then I thought about it and realized that I really couldn’t. lol… I have been doing some binge-comfort reading!

Anyways, Jared and I decided that we would try to budget gifts this year and be more thoughtful and craft-y. I think being crafty is a gene that I didn’t inherit, so I really have to try extra hard to get this sort of thing right, but in the end, I think they sort of look pretty good. These are cookies in a jar!

Then I found cute fabric and ribbons and scissors and tada:

Not too bad, eh? Hopefully they end up tasting pretty good. 🙂 All the dry ingredients for your cookies!