Our family has an amazing number of birthdays spread out over September and October!

Dear Husband and I were invited to celebrate our birthdays with My-Sister-The-Nurse and her children and grandchildren.  It was wonderful to be wrapped up in that big group of people, from newborn to almost eighty years old.  We had a lovely meal, and watched the most brazen squirrel steal the ornamental corn on the table just outside the sliding glass doors.  I love being with my extended family.

This weekend, just two weeks later, My-Sister-The-Nurse, and DH and I drove down to visit with Frankie, and her husband and daughters.  It was My-Niece-The-Artist’s birthday on Saturday, and DH’s birthday is this coming Saturday, so we were celebrating, once more.

We drove down  on Friday,  getting in around 2:00 EST.  We sat quietly for a bit, not quite snoozing, until Frankie arrived and we had the chance to chat. Dinner at home, and we all called it a day early to be ready for a full Saturday.

We had a lovely breakfast that was sorta like a  “You Pick Two…..or Three or Five” before heading off for a tour at the Kokomo Opalescent Glass factory.  This factory is the oldest art glass factory in the United States.  They supply Tiffany with glass, and their glass is in the Smithsonian and the White House.   The tour was fabulous.  We saw molten glass moved by men from the furnace to a roller, where sheets of glass were created.  A glass artist was working on blowing a small bowl, and we saw most of that process.  We walked through a HUGE room of stored sheets of glass in every color, and of course, it reminded me of a quilter’s stash.  The end of the tour brought us to the area where artists were making items for sale in the gift shop.  One of the women gave a demonstration of bead making, and we each carried away a piece of the glass we saw being made at the start of the tour.  It was just fascinating!  I brought home two hand-blown teardrop-shaped ornaments for our Christmas tree.

We went to dinner at an Irish pub to celebrate birthdays, and visited with friends who came to see our artist.  We got to spend some time with our artist’s sister, too, which was very nice.  I spent a lot of time holding Mickey, their very old grey and white tiger cat, who needed to be kept warm.   I really appreciated getting my cat fix, since we have been pet-less for some years now.

Sunday morning we were treated to a fabulous breakfast before it was time for us to head home.  Frankie makes the best egg casseroles.  Her hubby put together Michigan peaches and blueberries, and strawberries for us, and there was an amazing variety of bread: rye, wheat, cinnamon, cobblestones, apple cider donuts, and on, and on.  We could have rolled home! lol

I’m not getting across to you that it was really the time with family that was so wonderful.  Yes, the tour was interesting, and yes the meals are always fabulous, but the time spent with our family was just the best!  It was really difficult to say goodbye.

Thank you, dear sister, for a wonderful visit!  Your home is lovely, and you are an amazing hostess. Big Hugsssssssssss to you.  Take good care of yourself, hmm?

I hate to say it, but we’re not kids any more. <sigh>  At least that’s true of our innards.  We’ve known for years that there is a growing list of things we can no longer eat in terms of fast food.  I love K-F-C Extra Krispy chicken!  Every two years or so I hunt down one of their shops and get several chicken breasts and bring them home with coleslaw and a biscuit.  Once I’ve eaten them, I know why I don’t do it regularly.  My body just thinks it’s a bad idea nevermind what my tongue is saying.  Gyros are on that list, too, and a lot of other things.

We are also at the point where we COULD order one meal and share it.  We both like the same things, and frequently when we have gone out to eat, I have thought, “I wish I’d ordered that…” when I hear what  DH chooses.  We could just as easily order two meals with the intent of taking half of each home with us, so we didn’t have to cook the next day either.

I’m aware that we need to be eating “dinner” earlier in the day, and need to change my cooking habits.  We also need more protein earlier in the day, which seems more difficult to accomplish.  I’ve suggested to DH that we consider making our evening meal either vegetarian or soup.   We might want to swap the wok with the crockpot.

Lots of choices to consider, decisions to make.  Whatever we do we need to have more vegetables, and fewer carbs in our diet.

I saw a recipe for butternut squash-apple-bacon soup in one of the magazines I’ve read in the past three or four weeks.  I really want to try that soup, but can’t find the recipe I planned to use.  So, today I spent some time searching for an acceptable alternative.

I had no idea how popular this soup must be!  I found one that had been designed to start a Thanksgiving celebration, filled with seasonings, lots of carrots and onion, apple, curry, and apple cider.  I had everything but the cider, or I might have tried it today.  This chef had roasted cubes of squash to give the soup a deeper flavor.

Since I couldn’t do that soup, I looked at another, and it had fresh sage (I still have some until the freeze), but the squash was cooked in the broth, rather than being roasted.  This soup was simpler to prepare.

When I don’t have apple cider, I think I’ll make Emeril Lagasse’s Butternut Squash soup.  It has the apple and bacon and butternut squash, plus  half an onion and some leek.   The only ingredient I might not have on hand every day was the leek, and I could always adjust to a little more onion.

THIS will be the fall we’ll try Butternut Squash-Apple-Bacon soup!  And I think it just might be this week.

We have a week of temperatures in the 50s, and our first frost warning.  We’re supposed to have SNOW on Wednesday, and the forecaster seemed to think the highest accumulation would be over the town where we live!  It’s only supposed to be an inch and a half, but still, it’s SNOW!  (I can hear the people in Denver, and through out Kansas, laughing, given the snow they had last week.

I saw an egret and a heron this morning as we came home from exercise.  They’ll be gone soon.  I wonder if they fly in flocks as the geese do.  Dear Husband reminded me that the sand hill cranes fly in flocks, so he suspects the herons and egrets do, too.I brought in four pots of plants that I want to winter over.  I suspect they may be shocked to go from the upper 40s to the upper sixties, but I wasn’t up to carrying them to the garage, and then carrying them in.  Three of the pots hold geraniums, and the fourth is a pot of spearmint.  I’m not sure how the spearmint will do inside, but it seems worth the try.

There are three pots of iris, and one of thyme that I’ll winter over in the garage.  They did well last year.  I think I’ll let the chrysanthemums in the pots go.

It’s time for some Fall cleaning, inside and out.  Our favorite landscaper will come to put the gardens to bed.  I can’t do the time on my knees any more,and he has wonderful tools to make the job go faster.  I need to take down curtains in the garage to be washed and ironed.  I can clean the inside windows once I start that, and I’ll arrange for outside windows to be done, too.

I’m FINALLY going to use EZ-off on the tops of the gas burners on the stovetop.  It’s a job that I have intended to get to for ages, and now it the time to get it done.

And I hope to pull some grapevine down to top off Cousin It, a wonderful grapevine Christmas tree that my sister, Frankie (and her husband) made for me.  We wrapped it a couple of years ago, and it’s settled.  I’d like to fluff it up a bit, and get the lights wrapped around it again. (Thank you, Frankie!)

And so its goes….we get ready for colder weather.