Four Days

Just four more days until I get to go home! Luckily, my Friday class is canceled for this week, so I can leave Thursday afternoon! I really have only been home three times this semester and that's really just not enough in my opinion! I'm so looking forward to seeing family and friends and just having a break from Auburn and college life for a little while! Don't get me wrong, Auburn is great, but it's nothing like home!

I don't have too much going on this week. No tests or projects due, but I need to be as prepared as possible for finals before I leave. I know I won't get anything done while I'm home. I really need to start working on my graduate school application. The application itself is not too long or hard, but I also have to refine my resume with new grades, etc. for the semester, prepare a purpose statement, fill out the general business and School of Accountancy scholarship applications, and apply for a Graduate Research Assistantship. It won't be too bad, but I need to get going on all of it. The hardest part will be the essays that go with the scholarship and assistantship applications and the purpose statement. Maybe I can knock the purpose statement out this week! I also need to ask professors for letters of recommendation. I need three and I know two people I want to ask for sure, but still need to decide between a few other professors for the last recommendation.

Also, on Tuesday I will be initiated into Beta Alpha Psi, a professional honorary accounting organization. We have initiation and then a meet and greet with an accounting firm followed by our final meeting of the semester. All of this will take a few hours, so my Tuesday will be pretty busy with classes from 8 to 2 and then having to be back on campus around 4:30. I have a feeling I won't accomplish anything after I get home that night besides falling into bed!

I've also got to start thinking about Christmas gifts! I won't be home until about 10 days before Christmas, so I need to get also accomplished over Thanksgiving week. Maybe I'll brave some Black Friday sales...or not!

Well, I'm going to go and get my things ready for classes tomorrow. I'm definitely going to take advantage of being able to go to bed early tonight! : )

Old Fashioned Fudge Pie

I've made this pie the past two weekends and several people have asked for the recipe, so I though I would share it with all you readers out there, too!

It's a Paula Deen recipe, so of course it has butter in it, but it's oh.so.good.

Makes 2 pies:

2 sticks butter
4 squares semi-sweet chocolate
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 regular frozen pie shells

Melt butter and chocolate in a heavy saucepan over low
Remove from heat and whisk in sugar then eggs
Pour into docked pie shells
Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 25 minutes (It usually takes longer in my oven to set)

I also like to add a little vanilla to the pie mixture. Some orange extract might be good also since orange pairs so well with chocolate! :)

Serve warm or cold, with a meringue, whipped cream or ice cream. Basically any way you want to! :)

What I'm thinking about today...

As you can see, my mind is on sitting in front of a roaring fire either at my house or my Grandparent's house in Florence. My parents went and got a load of wood for our house yesterday, so now we can have a fire whenever we want one. I just wish I was there to enjoy it, but I will be before I know it.

Sitting in front of a burning fire really signals the beginning of the Holiday season to me. There's just something about that crackling sound and the slight smoky sound to the air that tells me it's fall and Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner.

My Grandmother always keeps a good fire going during the winter. Her sewing room is off of the downstairs den where the wood-burning fireplace is (they have a gas one upstairs that's really just for looks), so she's always walking by the fireplace to go anywhere else in the house. Much to my Grandaddy's dismay, she's always throwing random trash or sewing scraps into the fire as kindling instead of using the fire starter or real kindling he provides. I guess she thinks she's creating less trash for landfills if she burns it! : )

Our fireplace at my house is good, but not near as much fun to sit in front of. Ours is a traditional-type fireplace and I just don't think it produces as much heat as my Grandparent's cast iron (I think) fireplace insert. It will do though! I like to turn one of the wing backs in front of the fireplace where I will be able to feel the heat or just simply sit on the hearth in front of it.

Instead of "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas", it's "I'm dreaming of a warm fireplace". haha

Almost There

I realized this week that, after the rest of this week and Monday-Thursday next week, I will only have a week and a day of class left. Then we will have dead day and start finals. Christmas is right around the corner!

With everything that has happened this semester--Winnie, Emma, job interviews, office visits and of course, classes--it really seems like time has flown by. My life has changed so much since I came back down here in August--mainly because I lost my first dogter and gained a new one.

There have been good things too that have happened this semester, but I can't say I'll be sorry to see it go. Saying goodbye to Fall 2008 is one step closer to August 2009 and Graduation!

Curiosity

Ok, so now I'm really curious. My Stat Counter tells me that I have had visitors to this site from: Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, California, and Maine. I can figure out who many of the people are from Alabama and Georgia, but I'm really curious who's reading this from California and Maine along with some of the other states. I can't imagine who's reading from some of these places. Please, if you are a reader that I don't already know about, let me know who you are by leaving a short comment. Since this isn't a public blog, I know I have to know you somehow, probably through Facebook. As I've said before, I don't care who's reading, but I would like to know who my audience is! : )

Have a great night all you mystery readers out there!

Counting Down the Mondays

One more Monday until Thanksgiving break! Four more Mondays of school before Christmas break! This semester has gone by quickly, but I'm so ready to see it be over! Next semester has two mini-term classes and my Internship. One more semester after that and undergrad is over!!

But, then I have three more semesters of the Masters program. I think it'll be different than undergrad though. My classes will be quite small and since I will hopefully have an Assistantship, I'll have a different kind of relationship with my assigned professor. Hopefully, I will get assigned to a tax professor so I can learn some more about tax and estate planning, my current area of interest in the profession. We'll have to see about that though. I have to get my application completed first...February 1 deadline, so maybe I'll know something about the time I come back to finish up after my Internship.

I've got a test tomorrow (Managerial Accounting) and it's my last one before break, so things will be smooth sailing until after Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, we only have about a week of classes after we come back before finals start. I just have to make sure I am caught up before I leave so it won't be so hard to refresh my memory for last tests (I think I only have one) and then finals (in each class, cumulative in all but one).

Mom and Dad are coming back this weekend, so I have to try to figure out what I want to take home for Thanksgiving so they can help me out and take the bulk of it with them. I will probably let them take some extra things as well in preparation for Christmas break. Something to think about...

Well, I'm going to knock out studying for this test so I can go to bed early tonight. Mom put my duvet on my bed this past weekend, so it's all warm and snuggly now. Mom can't stand it, but I love all the blankets and the duvet that make the covers so heavy. There's something comforting about really heavy and thick blankets on a bed.

I managed to get a few new pictures of Emma uploaded to the site today! Please take note of my AMATEUR status as a photographer. These pictures are nothing compared to the ones my Uncle took a couple of months ago. Unfortunately, I got to his house after dark on Thursday, so we weren't able to get any new ones.

Emma decided sleeping on my foot was a really good idea!

"Mom, can you turn off that flashy thing? I'm getting tired of this!"-Emma

"I'm so sleepy I can barely sit up!"

"I told you I was tired of this!"
Her eyes look pretty scary in this one, but I promise you she is sweet!

So there you have it! Some new, more grown up pictures of Emma. She was about 15 weeks old in the others you have seen and now she's over five months old. She's still little, but I can certainly tell she has grown. She's still just one handful though! She's going to the groomer's this week, so there might be some new pictures of her with a little less fur!