Our new kitchen is fantastic. It's an alley kitchen, but a BIG one! We have a nice big gas stove (one of the burners has a 'power boil' setting that really does the trick!), a large dishwasher and a new fridge- all stainless steel. We have a ton of counter space- it's some sort of fake granite looking material- dark gray. It's been really fun cooking and baking in our new kitchen! I've become obsessed with sweet potatoes! Who knew those little orange taters were so delicious! I've been dicing them up with some red skins, tossing them in olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic and roasting them in the oven for about an hour. So delicious!- they get a little crunchy but still soft and sweet. I also ha
ve been baking a lot. I made some cute little cupcakes for my students (even though my mom tried to eat them all...), mini banana muffins with brown sugar crunch and some fantastic sticky buns for an early morning math department meeting. I looked a few different recipes for cinnamon rolls that called for white icing before I remembered the gooey goodness of sticky buns like the ones Paige used to make. I found a recipe that sounded good and just kinda winged it. They were fantastic. I used crescent roll dough instead of bread dough and made the gooooo from brown sugar and butter. Wow- there were so good. Zach thought they were too sweet- not too surprising given his opinion of desserts and sweet things- but that was okay- more for the math teachers!School is going really well. The first quarter is already over- it just flew by! I had to do
report cards a few weeks ago and this upcoming week we have our version of parent-teacher conferences. We do conferences a bit different then other schools- instead of it being a meeting between parents and teachers about kids its a meeting led by the student where the child explains to their parent or guardian how they did in the first quarter. A lot of work goes into the meetings so the studen
ts are prepared for them- so fingers crossed that my advisees do well! Before we started all the conference preparation we had a little fun around halloween! We made little pumpkins out of construction paper and hung them on my door! They were all so cute- and so different. They really brought some smiles to the hallway. I hung a sign on the top of my door that said "Miss P's Pumpkin Patch"Even better than pumpkins on the door- the whole math department dressed up for halloween! My dorky enthusiasm for the holiday spread throughout the department as I strongly suggested costumes to the other teachers until we became a wonderfully festive foursome! Nora is on the far left- she teaches geometry and has an X ax and a Y ax around her neck (get it... x and y axes... ? ) I am next, with a box necklace and whiskers drawn on my face (I'm a box and whisker plot!) Julie is to my right, she also teaches geometry. She is a Google ( a one followed by a hundred zeros)- she's wearing a one necklace with a chain link of 100 zeros! And Lauriann is on the right- she teachers Algebra II and Pre-Calculus. She has a script i on her tummy- she is the number i , the rest of her costume is imaginary (math dorks who get this joke can giggle now). It was really great.
Oh, we also made duck-tape wallets in advisory a few weeks ago. All of the kids got really into it. I bought duck tape in red, black, blue, purple, silver, camo and zebra and they went to town! We had one day where I showed them how to do it and then they spent the next few days making their own wallets. Some are really intense- with change pockets and id windows. I was really impressed!
Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone it is time to start thinking about the winter holidays! I can't believe it's almost time for christmas- it feels like we just started school! Zach and I are hosting Christmas at our apartment year- quite the grown up feat! I'm excited - but nervous about it! Fingers crossed I can figure out the turkey situation...
