Football and Cookies

So this past week I worked a grand total of 2 days because of...well, let's just call it a series of unfortunate events. Tuesday and Saturday I had scheduled off and Wednesday through Friday I was forced to call in sick. It was awesome...except not. I was quite bored the vast majority of the time, sitting around in my apartment having nothing to do and barely able to walk. I'm crossing my fingers that I never have to do that again while I'm here, because on top of actually missing being at work, my paycheck is basically nonexistent this week. :/

Ok so there's the negativity of the week. Moving on from that. :) Now, usually my off days are Tuesday and Wednesday...that's my weekend. A while ago, though, I put in a request to have Saturday the 13th off. Everyone who reads this will probably judge me, but that's ok...I asked off so on Saturday I would be free to watch the Red River Rivalry (which also happened to be the first football game I've really gotten to watch since this season started!) So Saturday rolls around and I go to Chris's apartment to watch the most beautiful game of football I've seen in quite a long time. :) (Side note--BOOMER SOONER!) And while I was watching that game, I also got to bake some DELICIOUS pumpkin cookies!!

Now, I might be a little obsessed with these cookies...they are the absolute easiest things to make and they are so moist and wonderful and delicious...I wish it was acceptable to eat these year-round, but I'm a very big supporter of leaving things that belong in certain seasons within that season...so Christmas music doesn't start until the day after Thanksgiving, wearing pastels stays in the Spring months, and these pumpkin cookies don't get baked until Fall is announced. :) There's just something about having one of these cookies with a glass of milk for a nice snack, or break from homework...or breakfast...is that too much? *guilty look*

So since my second favorite season has officially begun, I made the cookies!!! And now I am going to share the simple and splendid recipe with all 2 of you who read this. :)

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies (With Cream Cheese Icing)

COOKIE:

Ingredients:
1 package spice cake mix (18.25 0z)
1 can pure pumpkin (15 oz)
1/2 to 1 bag mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
makes about 2 dozen cookies

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large bowl, stir together the cake mix and pumpkin until well blended, and then add in the chocolate chips.
 

Mmmm...tasty dough. :)

Using a spoon, drop dough in dollops onto a greased cookie sheet, leaving a bit of room between each cookie. (This dough doesn't rise much so you don't need to worry too terribly about the cookies spreading...they basically maintain their shape.)
Bake them for about 18 to 20 minutes in the pre-heated oven.  (I rotate the pan every 5 minutes but you don't have to...I only do that because I was scarred in my old apartment by a terrible oven...one half of the trey of cookies were burned and the other half wasn't even done cooking. It was awful. And very confusing...)

Here is a picture of a trey of the cookies straight out of the oven. Seriously, they don't change their shape much at all, it's kind of fun. :) After they're out, just leave them to cool for a few minutes and then they're ready to be iced!

ICING:

Ingredients:

2 (8 oz) packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter until creamy. Mix in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the powdered sugar.

It is THAT simple.  Don't ice all of the cookies at once, just the ones you plan on eating, and store the leftover icing in the fridge until you need it later.

And that's it, that's the recipe for possibly my favorite cookie in all the world...in fact, I think I would like to have one right now! Mmmmmm. :D :D

I'm carving a pumpkin tomorrow that I bought today at a cute little Baptist Church's pumpkin patch. Hopefully when I'm done it will look like Stitch, but plans could change...or I could fail. I'm excited, though, it's been a long time since I last carved a pumpkin!

Cookie time. :)

Courtney

P.S. Holy cow...2 blogs within the span of a week. I can't even believe it! I hope no one gets used to this...

The Adventure

So Disney is absolutely wonderful. :) My job is pretty great--it involves a lot of multiple aspects, so only rarely do I feel like I've been doing the same thing for too long.  The people I work with are tons of fun. I even found a couple girls to start going to church with! So that's exciting.  

Last week, Chris and his roommate Matt (who also happens to be one of my co-workers) decided to go on an adventure/mission throughout the parks of Disney.  We decided we wanted to try to ride every thrill ride in all 4 of the parks in one day. So, we left around 10:30 to have breakfast at Panera Bread and then around 11:15 we were on our way! We started in Epcot and rode Mission: Space, the Orange track, of course. :)

 That was a good time. It was the only ride we considered a thrill ride in Epcot, however. As much fun as Soarin' is, I wouldn't quite call it "thrilling". So that was the end of Epcot.  We did, however, stop in the Festival Center for a bit to get free chocolate, look at all the wines and chocolate art and wish we had more money to buy all the Mickey Mouse kitchen utensils.  And then we were on our way to The Magic Kingdom! It's Matt's favorite park, and the whole time he was emphasizing how much he wanted to stop and watch Dream Along With Mickey on the castle stage, but I was determined to not stop because I didn't want to fail. We didn't end up making it to MK until around 1:30 and we had to ride two rides there and then make our way to Animal Kingdom and ride two more rides there before that parked closed at 5, so I was feeling pressed for time. We fast-passed Splash Mountain for 2:45 since the line was almost an hour wait and headed over to ride Space Mountain, one of my favorite rides in all the parks.

                                               
 After that we realized we had about an hour still before our fast pass so we stopped for lunch at Tortuga Tavern and then, to the joy of Matt, we got to go watch Dream Along With Mickey.  I learned that day that he has that entire show memorized...that was impressive.  So that ended and we made our way over to Splash Mountain!

 After Splash Mountain, we made a quick stop at first aid to grab a bandaid for me (my chacos gave me a blister...that was frustrating) and then hurried along to Animal Kingdom! At this point we were also racing some rain and by the time we got to Animal Kingdom we only had an hour before the park closed.  First stop was Dinosaur!

 And then Expedition Everest, where I realized that from one point on the ride you can see all three of the other parks...that was cool. :)

 We finished in Animal Kingdom with 15 minutes to spare before it closed, and still the rain was holding out.  So we headed to our final stop--Hollywood Studios! We grabbed a fast pass for Rockin' Roller Coaster that was for about 30 minutes from that point, so that was nice.  We went and rode Tower of Terror (Chris's least favorite ride) and I am happy to report that we all survived it.

After Tower of Terror we still had 15 minutes before our fast pass time so we all bought some treats as we waited...I got some chocolate ice cream, it was tasty. :) And then was our last ride, and what we all agree is the absolute best ride in all of the parks, Rockin' Roller Coaster. :D
                                               

DEFINITELY my favorite ride of the day/all of Disney.  We got done around 6:30 and we were rather exhausted, but feeling very successful in our endeavor.  We had originally talked about ending the day in Universal to just ride one thrill ride like Hulk or something, but I think we all knew that was a long shot.  We would have had basically an hour to drive over there, park, walk over there and check in, and honestly we were all so tired that it didn't seem very ideal at all. 

So that was our Day of Adventure.  Up next on my agenda is Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party on the 23rd and then a special sneak-peek viewing of the new Fantasyland on the 30th...I am very excited for both of those things. :)

All of this to say that I am having a wonderful time here in Orlando, Florida.  I know I haven't been super diligent in keeping up with this, and hopefully that will change, but like I said in my very first post, I can make no promises, and honestly the fact that I have kept up with it for this long is a pretty big deal. I'll try to post another one in the next week talking more about what I've been up to here on a daily basis, but if I don't, I'll surely have one up documenting my time at Mickey's Not-So-Scary. :)

For now, I am going to take a nap, I do believe. I love everyone who read this, and I miss all of my friends and family who are not here with me, and for those of you coming to see me, I can't tell you how so very excited I am! 

Courtney

P.S. It's still about 90 degrees over here...the one downside of being in the Sunshine State. Anyone who is getting anything colder, want to send some of that my way please?