Anticipation

To take a break from my homework, I decided to post a bit about recent happenings and future happenings that I'm excited about.

Recent Happenings

After a recent bout with tendonitis, I am finally starting to heal up. Thank goodness! My leg hasn't been swelling up nearly as frequently or been nearly as tender and painful as it was. It's scary how even an injury as minor as mine is can dramatically impact the day so extensively. At first, I had no choice but to be practically sedentary for about a week. Then, I had to take frequent breaks so my leg wouldn't swell up and become painful. Needless to say, the experience was humbling and made me grateful for the health I have been blessed with.

Going off of that, our trip to New Orleans began only three days after my urgentcare visit. Honestly, although I enjoyed it, I spent most of trip lagging behind the hubs and sis attempting to keep up with them with my bum leg. I had to miss out on a few adventures because I physically couldn't participate. Again, the whole experience was eye opening. Despite my setbacks, I got to go to the cathedral again, ride the streetcars, see the riverfront, go to the World War II museum, enjoy some scrumptious food and live music. NOLA is a city to see y'all.

I've also been cooking up a storm lately. I've made chili, from scratch biscuits, an apple pumpkin pudding, cookies, gumbo-laya, and others. It's been my main source of me time and stress relief since I haven't been able to do much physical activity.

Future Happenings

Goodness, there are lots of things coming up that I'm excited about (anticipating -- hence the blog title) so I'm just going to make a quick list so I don't have to do so much writing and y'all don't have to do so much reading.

1.) Halloween parties galore - Carnival for school, trick or treat at work, and party on the farm!

2.) Check-up - Seeing the doc this Thursday with hopes to set my mind at ease about my health.

3.) Thanksgiving - The way it is working out with work and school, we get to go home for SIX days. I am super happy to spend some QT with our families.

4.) There's only a little over 6 weeks left in the semester! It has zipped by but I'm ready for this one to be over. It has been a drag.

Excited to see everyone on Saturday! Adios.

Soloing

So I know it's been entirely too long since I made a blog post. No excuses other than exhaustion. I spend almost all of of my time outside of school working on school stuff. It's getting intense.

I'm currently smack dab in the middle of my solo week(s). They failed to tell me before this semester began that "solo week" actually means ten days or two weeks in the school world. For me, it's stretched over three weeks because of crazy scheduling issues. I began the two days before fall break, taught the three days after our two day fall break, and then have all of this week to teach.

It's been interesting since I've switched coordinating teachers in the middle of that. The first teacher left (this was planned if you remember) and after some crazy mess with hiring there is now a full time sub listed as my coordinating teacher (well as soon as he gets his paperwork complete). I was very nervous about this change, but it's been pretty good. He gives me different advice than my first teacher, but it's still solid advice. It lets me see that no one teacher has it all figured out and takes some of the pressure off of me.

It's also been an interesting few days since I know the students and the classroom routines more thoroughly than he. It's been a bit stressful since all the planning was on me. He has provided some material.

Enough school talk. What else have I done? I did start watching Gilmore Girls. It's entertaining. ;) I wish my mom and I had that sort of relationship, but then again I kind of like the relationship I have with my mom. So far it's just a happy, funny show that I use to break up my study/planning sessions.

One month and three weeks until graduation. Very little idea what I'm doing after that day, but I'll Scarlett O'Hara that thought. By the way, you are coming to my graduation, correct? December 7.

Mom's Birthday...and all the food!

As most of you know, my mother had a birthday yesterday! I had a bunch of fun fixing her a birthday dinner and an edible gift. My beau and I decided to fix the dinner...we had a sweet, garlicky chicken, green beans from the garden, baked apples from our apple tree, and kale salad with blueberries and strawberries (kale from the garden, blueberries from our bushes, and strawberries from a friend's garden!) And because it was a birthday, and you can't forget dessert, we made a chocolate pie with homemade whipped cream. It was all REALLY good. My beau and I aren't really used to fixing dinner, but it turned out to be quite tasty, and we were proud. Just thinking about the yummy food makes me mouth water. I thought I'd share the pictures and recipes from some of the dishes we made since it all tasted so delicious. You can find the pie recipe here...this recipe was fairly easy and it tasted very good! You can find the chicken recipe here. I would recommend the chicken recipe for it's simplicity and for the ability to alter it slightly to your taste with added herbs or spices that you like.

As for Mom's gift..I had seen a recipe on Pinterest about making homemade turtles. Since this is probably her favorite candy, I decided to try to make them for her birthday. They were fairly simple to put together and turned out really tasty. The only issue I had was with the caramel rolling over the pecans and then sticking to the wax paper (and then causing the turtles to stick together once they were in the container together). I'm not sure how to avoid this, except maybe to make a thicker layer of pecans on the bottom and not use as much caramel on each one. Even with this problem, I would recommend the turtle recipe.

Mom actually made the salad, she also put roasted almonds in it...SO good!

The baked apples were good..but I think we can do better next time!

I had to sample her turtles...and they are yummy!

That's all for now!
The Farmer's Daughter