Good morning everyone. One more day of work and then its Thanksgiving weekend, yey :) This year my roomie and I are being ambitious and cooking dinner for friends. Last night I tackled the pies. I've never made a pie before so I wasn't exactly sure what to do. But I followed the directions in the cookbook for apple pie and it seemed to work out ok. I was surprised at how little actually goes into a pie crust, only flour, salt, shortening and water. That's it.
So I mixed and rolled my crust according to the recipes suggestions. Now I just hope for the best. I'm hoping my crust will be flaky and not hard or dry, or soggy. We'll see when I bake it I guess :)

The pumpkin pie was easy. I bought the crust and all you have to do is mix everything together, dump it in and bake it. Couldn't be much easier than that. Baking is fun, tonight I'll mix up the dough for the rolls and set it to rising.

It's snowing! That makes me happy :) Keep it coming! It looks so pretty, so much better than dreary brown.

Yesterday was Wednesday so I had GEMs. Brought the girls' mirrors back (I brought them home to dry and to put hangers on the back), we had praise and worship to start, then we had a craft. Denise had a craft planned for us. We made thank you gifts for the teachers and leaders in the church. The girls got to make two, one for someone in the church and one to take home to give to someone. A lot of the girls had a hard time with this. Some wanted to take both home, others wanted to give them to each other... It was kind of tough telling the girls that they couldn't, but I think it's an important lesson that they need to learn. It's also hard to get them to think of people outside of their immediate family. So an interesting night.

Afterwards we had a counsellor meeting at one woman's house. That was a little strange. All the other counsellors are married with kids. I felt really young and free. They were talking about how difficult it is to get out... how more than twice in one week is plenty... And I'm thinking, only twice? Its kinda nice being able to go out whenever you want. I think I'll enjoy others peoples kids for awhile :)

*looks around groggily*

Bleh, I hate headaches. Especially when they wake me up. This morning I was awake at 5:30 because of my stupid head. So I stumbled around in the dark, found some water and drugs, swallowed and fell back into bed. But on the flip side, I slept much better from 5:30 to 8:30...a little too much better.

I had a dream that DC and I went to my place again. We were at church and there was this rock band playing on the balcony. All my friends were there too, and some were in the band. I remember them being good, but can't remember what they sounded like. Strange dreams.

Monday...*sigh* I had a good weekend though. Friday night Cathy and I went to Pete Brown's Office (we're becoming regulars there :) to see one of Cathy's friends play. That was a lot of fun, I met all kinds of cool people. But I didn't get home till after two, which was kinda bad cuz Saturday DC, Michelle, Stacy and I went shopping. We hit three different malls and were out for 12+ hours. Man were my feet tired :) But I got some new clothes which I really needed, so that's good.

Sunday morning I slept in...oops :) Cleaned up a bit in the afternoon then went to the Vesper service. Went out to dinner afterwards with my roomie then came home to watch CI, of course. Worked on my cats x-stitch which is going to take me forever...but it'll be worth it, I really like the pattern. Anywho, back to work now...

It's snowing! Well, not anymore, but it was when I drove in to work this morning. I can't wait for the snow to come :) It makes everything look so pretty. Much better than dreary brown.

Last night at GEMs was fun. I started off with the girls in two lines, facing each other. One side were mirrors and they had to mimic everything the other side was doing. Then we switched it around. The lesson was about being created in God's image and how we reflect God like mirrors. After our little game, I passed around the magazines with our lesson in it. The girls were not sitting in their chairs, so I said that whoever is sitting by the time I count to 10 gets a candy. That worked very well :) I'll have to remember that one. Our lesson continued the story about Josie that we've been reading all year. After some questions we got to the fun part. I bought some foam and mirrors and foam cutouts. I made frames for the mirrors out of black foam and had the girls decorate the frames with foam shapes. Heart, circles, squares, triangles, butterflies, dragonflies, ... The girls loved doing that, and it kept them quiet. We finished up our evening singing with the rest of the GEMs girls.

*breaths a big sigh of relief*

Its the weekend! Yey! That makes me so happy :) Talk about a roller coaster day. I worked on a total of four projects today. Not each one at a time, but on a rotating schedule. I worked on each one for about 10 minutes to half an hour, then switch! We've been getting things in three of our projects all synched up and my bosses were testing so we could push up a release tonight. So, boss 1 discovers an issue in project A, update, push up. Boss 2 discovers an error in project B, fix, push up. Boss 2 has a question about project C, take a moment to answer. Have a meeting for project D, drive over to client, come back, boss 1 is waiting with another issue, boss 2 has a couple more questions. Boss 1 finds some strange data in our database... And so on and so on, all day long.

*phew* This nutty (though strangely satisfying) day is over and I can go home and not think about work till Monday. Life is good.

GEMS

Last night was fun. I was missing two of my girls, but I think that last night was the rowdiest. One girl in particular...she was actually vibrating she had so much energy. She couldn't sit still for more than 2 minutes at a time. Tiring just to watch her.

But despite that, the girls had fun. We started out with a charades type game to illustrate the power of words. They really liked that. After the game I pulled out my candy jar. You should have seen their eyes :) When I said that they had to sit down before getting any candy, they quickly found their seats. Candy works well on these girls. As they were munching away, we managed to get through two lessons, which surprised me, cuz they were so loud. But they did come up with good answers so they were listening too. I think the girls are warming up to me now, they were sharing all kinds of stories with me about their friends and school. I'm getting to know them better too.

I'm looking forward to next week, cuz I have a craft planned that ties into the lesson quite nicely. I used to love doing crafts when I was a Calvinette, and I know the girls will love it too. Next week's lesson also suggests a great game that the girls will love. Planning lessons for my girls is a lot of fun cuz at this age they are so receptive.

Tonight I picked up two new CDs, The Essential Simon and Garfunkel and Natalie MacMaster - Blueprint. Mmm, good stuff. Now I need to take a roadtrip. Nothing like the listening to some good tunes and driving the open road.