holiday stuff

I had a great holiday, hope all of yours went well. My family has a pie fest openhouse every year and this year was pretty good. All together we made about 30 pies. We have just about every kind that you can imagine, bannana cream, chocolate cream, butterscotch cream, coconut cream, chocolate chip, peanut butter, cheesecakes with various toppings, pecan, maple pecan, huckleberry, huckleberry strawberry, apple, cranberry apple, and of course pumpkin. There may have been more, but I don't remember... We make a big thanksgiving feast and have a private family dinner and then open the house for hungry pie eaters. This years dinner was a little unusual because we couldn't afford to bring home my cousins from college for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, so we had to do with out them, sad...but we invited some people who didn't have any family in Kotzebue to dinner and ended up with about 15 people. We had turkey, smoked turkey, peking duck, stuffing, mashed potatoes,gravy, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, Aunt Atha's salad(family recipe for a layered salad that nobody really likes but makes anyway because its tradition), spinach salad, and rolls. We were all stuffed and had to watch football and take naps before pie. Then we opened the house to the crowds. I think at one point we counted 30 people in our living room!! Most of them were highschool kids that my uncle teaches and the highschool volley ball team that my aunt coaches. It was loud and crazy and just the way I like it. And we got to eat leftovers for days. Nothing like turkey sandwiches at midnight!!

On a not so fun note, my computer crashed this weekend. Literally there was smoke coming out of it!! I'm no expert, but a computer should not smoke. They could get hard drive cancer, and emphazema of the disc drive. Seriously, smoking computer? not good... So I called the manufacturer hoping that my warranty was still good and of course it wasn't. So I am going to have to send it in for repairs and pay 300 for them to look at it. If they have to make repairs and get parts its extra. I guess I should have bought that extended warranty...

Well, I hope all your holidays went well and you had lots of fun. I am working on my ED 330 presentation and trying to be caught up in my other classes. So far this has been my craziest semester with work and taking 15 credits. I don't think I will try to do this again. It seems as if I can have no life outside work and school and still get good grades. oh the sacrifices we make. We were talking about the costs of higher education in another class and how its not just money, but time, energy and friends and family. But I know in the end it will be worth it for all of us. I think this class has been so great for me because I got to meet all of you who want to be teachers just like me. I always get excited when I find out that someone likes the same things as me (I'm a dork, I know) and it was great to see all these wonderful people who are going to be great teachers just like me. Sometimes I feel a little isolated over the phone and the internet, and it was nice to be in a classroom for a change.