Oh Where oh where have Sam and Marcie Gone?

You can always tell how busy things are for us judging by how clean our house is. And right now, our house looks like a tornado blew through it! Hahah! We've both had finals this past week. I've had report cards, Christmas programs at our school, and everything else in the world! It's been a VERY busy month! I've been waiting to do this post because I wanted my house to look clean so that I could take pictures of all our Christmas decorations. But, I don't know when our house will look clean again! So I'll just post about what pics I do have.

Well, the past few weeks have been very cold and stormy! This just puts me in the mood to cook! A few weeks ago I made Sam's favorite recipe, my Pumpkin Swirl Bread. Yummy! You can see a pic of it here!



It's SOOO yummy and it makes our house smell SOO good! It just puts me in the Christmas spirit. It's kinda a lot of work, but it's WELL worth it! Here's the recipe:

Pumpkin Swirl Bread

1 (8oz) cream cheese, softened

1/4 c. sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 3/4 c. flour

1 t. baking soda

1 1/2 c. sugar

1/2 t. salt

1/4 t. nutmeg

1 t. cinnamon

1 egg, beaten

1/3 c. water

1 c. canned pumpkin

1/2 c. margarine melted

Combine cream cheese, sugar and egg, mixing until well blended. Set aside. In a second bowl, combine dry ingredients. In a third bowl, combined pumpkin, margarine, egg, and water, mixing just until moistened. Add this bowl to the dry ingredients. Reserve 2 cups pumpkin batter; pour remaining batter into greased and floured 9 x 5 inch loaf pan. Pour cream cheese mixture over pumpkin batter; top with reserved pumpkin batter. Cut through batter with knife several times for swirl effect. Bake 350 for 1 hour 10 minutes, or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes; remove from pan. Makes 1 loaf

A few Saturdays ago I not only made my Pumpkin Swirl bread, but I also made homemade potato soup. (You can see Sam, as he's modeling his soup. And you can see our Christmas tree in the background! So cute!) This is my sister-in-law, Valerie's recipe. HOLY COW IS IT GOOD! It makes A LOT, so I cut the recipe into 4ths, and it made about 4 servings. Here's the original recipe:

Cheese-N-Potato Soup

4 c. water 4 chicken boullion cubes

1 c. celery, finely chopped 1 c. carrots, finely chopped

3 large potatoes, cubed 1 small onion, diced

6-8 strips bacon, cooked

Cook all these ingredients (minus bacon) 20-30 minutes until vegetables are tender. While the veggies are cooking, cook bacon and set aside. Then add to the vegetables:

2 small cans cream of chicken soup

1 lb. Velveeta cheese (cubed) then stir until melted

Crumble the bacon and add to soup.

The finished product! SOO yummy! Especially when you dip bread into it! It's even good cold or reheated! Enjoy! Merry Christmas everyone and happy cooking! :)

Please help my class!!

I entered my class into a video contest. I had to make a video of my students. They're singing Christmas songs, but that's only half of them (only the ones whose parents signed their permission slips to be entered).The top 20 classes will get $500 gift cards for Staples. They're really cute and so please vote for them! You can vote as many times as you'd like, you just have to refresh the page. Please help my class out!

Go to: www.cashforclasscontest.com/view_vote.php
Then go down to the bottom and look for :

1st grade, Evans
Riverside Prep

Thanks so much! My kids REALLY want to win (and so do I! :) )

OMG! I'm Famous!! :)

I had quite a shock when I walked into work today! One of my coworkers told me that a few of my Masters program buddies and I were in the newspaper. We saw the newspaper reporters and photographer in our Masters class on Thursday, but we didn't think much of it. Then, lo and behold, it ended up in the newspaper. Noted, it wasn't the front cover, but I've never had this kind of publicity! Hahah!

The newspaper article was about how our superintendent developed his own Masters/Doctorate programs that use more of the projects-based learning that our school heavily focuses on. In this pic, the superintendent gave us each a map of Greece and told us to identify various cities/regions within the map. However, the maps were all in Greek. Kinda interesting! So, that's what we're doing. Wow, the newspaper today . . . People Magazine tomorrow! Hahaha! :)

BTW- this is Sam's commentary of the pic (which he emailed to me!) Too funny!

" I would agree that she has the best hair and outfit out of the whole room, definitely. Her scarf is simple yet elegant and it is tied in a double Parisian neck bow, just like the fashionable and stately ladies of France used in the late 1700's. And her green top reminds us each that summer has ended and fall is upon us. You can also see that she is about to say something profound that will undoubtedly amaze and inspire the whole group. The camera probably could not capture the beauty of her voice and they wisely chose a picture that was taken before her melodious thoughts were majestically uttered." -Sam

Halloween Answer

Dang! You guys are good! Yes Tiffany, you're right. . . I was Miss Viola Swamp from the book "Miss Nelson is Missing". Here's the pic I tried to copy for my costume.


Pretty convincing, eh? I originally bought green striped tights. . . the package said and showed green tights, but once I opened the package it was red. Oh well. I know it's hard to tell, but I'm also wearing MASSIVE fake eyelashes as well as loads of blue eye shadow. My students sure LOVED my costume and most of them didn't recognize me. It was pretty fun!

I was pretty sick on Halloween, but Sam and I had a fun day carving our pumpkin and passing out candy to the one trick-or-treater who came by. It's ok. It left more candy for Sam and I! Hahha! Hope everyone else had a great Halloween! :)

Halloween Time

Ok, this'll be a quick post because I really should be getting to bed. I've been sick with a cold all weekend and so I need the extra rest. Anyway, on Friday my school had their Halloween celebrations. We had a schoolwide parade, filled with Halloween music. We did Halloween centers and of course we had our party. Well, everyone was told to dress up like a character from a book. Does anyone know who I picked to dress up as? *hint* It's from a popular kid's book. I'll reveal the answer later! :)

Ahhh, Disneyland! :)

Tis that time of year! Time for our annual Disneyland visit. Since I was on Fall Break, we decided to go on Wednesday to avoid the crowds. Ha! I guess lots of other schools have Fall Break too because it was kind of crowded. We still had fun though. Here Sam and I are at the Haunted Mansion, as it's all decked out in Halloween decor! So cool!

Sam TOTALLY spoiled me this year. He made reservations for us to eat at the Blue Bayou Restaurant, the one inside of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Holy cow was it fun! Even though it was inside of the ride, we couldn't hear the ride. It was so peaceful and very romantic!

Here's cute Sam at the Blue Bayou Restaurant. The food there was AMAZING!! Holy cow! Sam ordered the Tesoro Island chicken and I ordered the Monte Cristo sandwich. *drool*drool* I had read reviews online about how good the Monte Cristo was, and it sure lived up to it. It was to DIE for, totally unhealthy, but to die for! The outside was so crispy and the inside was so soft. Then they had this awesome jelly to put on it. Yum! Then Sam and I ordered the creme brulee. Oh my gosh! Heavenly! We are totally coming back to the Blue Bayou. Yum yum!

After lunch, Sam and I had fun riding the rides. We first went on Space Mountain, which they had changed to Ghost something or other. The ride was MUCH faster, darker, and it had this ghost that was chasing you. It was pretty fun! We were able to ride all the usual rides, but Indiana Jones was closed for maintenance, Splash Mountain & the Jungle Cruise were both down for a few hours for repairs. It was frustrating for a while not being able to ride some of the good rides (which clogs up the other rides), but we were able to ride them eventually!

Cute Sam as he's cleaning his glasses. We had to take a break to eat our yummy churros. Gosh, I realized that we sure do eat a lot while we're there. I guess we burned up so many calories walking around the park though!

Me giving the thumbs up on Disneyland.


Tom Sawyer's Island. Doesn't it look so peaceful?!


Looking over by the Haunted Mansion area.



I LOVED that everything was all decorated Halloweeny. Usually Sam and I go between Halloween and Thanksgiving, so there are more Christmas decorations up. It was fun to see how things were decorated. I LOVED the Mickey jack-o-lantern in the back of this picture (in front of Main Street).


Ok, this is Sam's famed picture. The first time that we went on Splash Mountain on Wednesday, Sam was trying to make this ugly face at the camera as we went down the last drop. But, he wasn't able to hold the face. So then the next time we went on it, Sam decided to be a muscle man. He kept practicing on all the smaller drops so that he'd be prepared for the big drop. And, he WAS able to hold his muscle man pose for the camera, although I think his face looks HILARIOUS! It's kind of hard to tell, but he's making this face that's like "HURRY take the picture because I'm getting scared!" Then when we saw his picture, we fell in love with it. We usually don't waste our money on expensive pictures like this, but this one was too good to pass up. All the other people in our log were laughing too. Too funny!!

Well, we had a BLAST at Disneyland this year! I can't wait for next year!! :)

Oh I LOVE Fall Break!!

So now that I'm off for fall break, what have I been up to? Well, yesterday was my first day off and I went shopping, of course. I also ordered our Christmas cards (Sam is so determined that we need to have our cards out at Thanksgiving, and that is only next month! WOW!) on Shutterfly. As for today, I cleaned the house all day (boy did it need it).

Then I made some mini-pumpkin bites. I found the recipe at http://www.bakerella.com/ . Hers turned out MUCH cuter than mine, but they still taste pretty awesome. I know it's hard to tell, but the pie crusts are actually in the shape of pumpkins. My drizzled chocolate turned out a little blobby because I cut the hole too large in the baggy. I also got some cute fall decorations and so now I'm in the fall spirit! Anyway, here's the recipe for them! They're pretty fun to make!!

Pumpkin Pie Bites

2 refrigerated ready-to roll pie crusts
8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup canned pumpkin

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter

Optional: 1/2 cup chocolate morsels

vegetable oil

re-sealable plastic bags

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.Use cookie cutter to cut 12 pumpkin shapes from each pie crust. You will need to roll the dough thinner than it comes out of the box. Press dough shapes into a 24 cup mini muffin tray. (Make 12 at a time, alternating cups to make sure pie crusts don’t overlap each other.) Apply egg whites from one egg to the top edges of each pie. Mix cream cheese, sugar, canned pumpkin, remaining 2 eggs, vanilla and pumpkin pie spice together until thoroughly combined. Spoon mixture into each pumpkin-shaped pie crust. Bake for 12-15 minutes. Remove pies to cool and repeat with second pie crust. Place the muffin tray in the freezer to cool it quickly for re-use.
Makes 24 pies. Keep refrigerated.

To decorate, melt chocolate in a heat-proof bowl in the microwave on medium. Heat in 30 second intervals, stirring in between until melted. Add a little vegetable oil to make the chocolate more fluid. Transfer to a re-sealable plastic bag and cut the corner off. Drizzle or draw faces on pies.

Note: The cutter I used was 3 3/4 inches wide, but if you don’t have one, don’t worry. Just use a round cutter around that size or slightly smaller to cut circle shapes out of the dough. Then make stems with the scraps. Press each stem over the edge and down the side of the dough before filling.

Pumpkin pie spice is a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice.
Enjoy!