Holiday Baking...and then some other things!

Ok so my mom makes these amazing pumpkin squares, and I had a faculty luncheon today and I wanted to impress my colleagues (or however you spell it..ha ha), so I decided to make it. Well, I asked my mom for the recipe thinking it would be a snap to put together. Well, I lost the recipe, so the prideful person I am just thinks, oh I can look it up on a recipe websight. I didn't want my mom to know, because I am so absent minded sometimes. I looked up what I thought to be the same thing. Well, it has three layers..crust, wich came out just fine. The filling required milk, wich I was out of. Run to the store in the middle of it to get the milk. Come back realize the filling calls for pumpkin pie filling not pumpkin. I already had the pumpkin so I made my own version of pumpkin pie filling. Spread that on. The last layer is some crumble topping. The butter all formed into a ball instead of crumbles, so I put it in the freezer to harder it up again, then crumbled it. Well, it wasn't crumbled enough so I added brown sugar. Finally I get it in the oven, and pull it out the full amount of cooking time. I cut into it ten minutes later to find the filling more like pumpkin pudding (it's supposed to be like a pumpkin pie in the middle). I turned on the oven again, and cooked it for another twenty min. I took it out and it looked NOTHING like my mom's pumkin squares. BOMB!I was pretty upset. By this time it was 9:15. I didn't want to make anything else. I ran to the store and got a buntcake and cut it up and put it on a platter. I am a pretty good cook, so it really bugs me when something doesn't turn out, and I hated to bring something from the store. WOW..long story! Anyway, I decided to take the pumpkin squares to my class. I couldn't waiste them, yet I didn't think they were good enough for the faculty luncheon. My class LOVED them..go figure. One little guy had three of them and kept moaning and groaning..ha ha. Oh gotta love my kids.
Well, enough of that! I have three days left of school. I am counting down. My students are sooo hard to motivate around this time of year. They get so excited and some of them even believe in Santa. I am am so excited for this weekend. Nick and I are having "our Christmas." We don't get to spend the actual day together, but he is coming up the day after. When we talk about traditions in our family they honestly are very similar. It's pretty funny that one of us will say what we do and the other will say we do that to! I think it's great, because then we won't argue on how to do things. Saturday night will be our Christmas Eve. We are going to exchange PJ's, have hot chocolate and cookies. On Sunday we will exchange gifts and even we did stockings. I am planning on making a nice dinner for us. I got a turkey from my school! It's just makes me thankful for traditions, and realize my parents made it very special around the holidays. Shout out to MOM and DAD! Love you guys!
Also I have to say Nick, I Love you!!!