Things I'm thankful for

We all know that the month of November is suppose to remind us of all we are thankful for, so I thought I would share some of the things I am thankful for. Now I could list health, family, friends, etc. and I am thankful for all those things, but I thought I would let you know of some of the little things that I love.
One thing I love and am very thankful for are Gala apples, especially crisp juicy ones. I love taking one in my lunch and biting into it and eating it while I visit with my friends. I love Gala apples because they are a little bit tart and a little bit sweet - just right. I love their crispness and I like the color varieties in them - from almost completely yellow with a few red stripes to almost completely red with a few yellow stripes. That apple just makes my day.

Maybe Garth and I are getting old

You have to have an idea that you are getting old when:

Garth gets all the bills ready to mail and forgets to put stamps on them. Then I take them all to the mailbox and don't even notice they don't have stamps and mail them all.

I go out of my way to buy my mom a birthday card and then promptly forget all about it and don't send it.

Garth puts out the wrong garbage cans on trash day and neither of us notice until we come home that night. Our neighbors must really wonder about us.

Last weekend a friend calls and ask Garth to play golf. Terry books the tee time and takes Garth to an executive course in a retirement community and Garth can't even win on a bunch of par threes. But Terry left one golf shoe in the golf cart and didn't notice until they got home, at least Garth hasn't done that yet.

Finally, I take Garth's pants to the cleaners, fill out my information and proceed to walk out the door and get in my car. The cleaner had to chase me down to get the pants back because I had carried them to the car with me.

Yikes, I'm not even 50 yet, what will I be like in a couple more years! All of these only happened in the last week.

To every season, turn, turn, turn...

The Byrds told and we all know that the seasons are suppose to turn or change, but this year I think we are in perpetual summer. I know that it is suppose to be fall. The calendar says it is fall and last night was Halloween, but we had little girls come trick-or-treating in skimpy strapless ballerina costumes and not even shiver.
I saw trees with their leaves changing three weeks ago in Ohio so why on November 1st did I have to turn my air conditioner on by 10:00 am? And by 3:00 the thermometer in my car read 92.

Every day I check the weather forecast for Phoenix hoping to see the temperatures drop. Every week the weather man plays to our sympathies and dangles hope in front of us that by the end of the week we will have highs in the 80's. But by the end of the week the forecast is revised and we are still in the 90's!

After seven months of blistering heat you would think we could have some cool weather in November! This is suppose to be the time of year where we get a reprieve from the heat and can gloat about our beautiful weather and be rewarded for living through another summer. It continues to make you wonder why we live in this desert.

Where have all the years gone?

Years ago I used to get so excited to put up the Halloween decorations and always had them up by the first of October. This year I was considerably slower and it wasn't until I had gone to both of my girl's homes and seen their cute Halloween decorations that I decided I needed to get mine out.

Over the years I have amassed five tubs of Halloween decorations and costumes. And yes, I still have it all. After looking at the cute, classy decorations my girls had in their homes, most of the items in my five tubs looked a bit old and shabby. None of them could be classified as classy and most of them wouldn't be considered cute by anyone but me. Most of my decorations where purchased on sale at Drug Emporium (that tells you how old they are), made at homemaking meetings twenty years ago or by my elementary age children. I have a dried apple faced witch that Lonica made in girl scouts, five starched ghosts we made for family night, a paper mache pumpkin jar Preston made and this little mummy he wrapped years ago.
One summer when I had both my feet operated on, the kids and I sat and painted this Haunted House and all the little figurines that go with it. Needless to say, the paint job isn't the best but the kids got so excited every year when we would get it out. They would remember which parts they had painted and would carefully set it up as if it were a real work of art.
While none of my Halloween decorations would fetch even a quarter at a garage sale, they are priceless to me and I will keep all five of my tubs full of Halloween memories and let my kids go through them some day.

Here is one more memory of a year with a little ghost, a waitress, a mummy and a news reporter. When children are little it seems like the day will never come when they will be gone but it comes much faster than a mother could ever imagine.

P.S. Jason would never recommend anyone be a mummy for Halloween -it takes a long time to get wrapped, it's very difficult to run from house to house without your costume falling off and most important, it's very hard to go to the bathroom!

Halloween Cookies

After only one month of marriage, Garth and I had our first Halloween together. Trying to be a good homemaker, I made Halloween cookies and asked Garth to help me decorate them. You would have thought I'd ask him to build me the Taj Mahal! I didn't realize that all families didn't spend days making cut out cookies and decorating them every Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day and Easter. It was one of my family's traditions that I loved.

After that first year of marriage I realized that decorating cookies would not be an entire family affair in our new family. So for the first few years I made and decorated cookies on my own; Garth was more than happy to help eat them though. As we started having kids they all joined in on making the dough, cutting out the cookies and of course, decorating and eating them.

Well, somewhere along the line, some of the enthusiasm for making cookies left me and I haven't made Halloween cookies for years. This year I decided that I needed to make some; one, because I feel bad that Preston misses out on so many of the traditions that we used to do when all the kids where home and two, because I just love to eat those cookies. So we decided that for Family Home Evening this week we would decorate cookies. I made the cookies and then, you guessed it, Preston and I decorated them. Garth did come and help eat them though.

The rest of our Ohio trip

Since Lonica is a much quicker blogger than I am and I don't know when I will get around to finishing the blog of our trip, you can check out her blog and read all about the rest of our stay in Ohio at: http://scottandlonica.com/blog/?p=392 she has two posts about our trip.

I just thought I'd throw in a couple of other photos. This one is of the wonderful Sunday dinner that Lonica and Scott made. Hint: If you want to eat well go visit those two! We were glad that Candace came over for dinner and wished we had been able to see Dave but he was in San Antonio. This is the tree across the street from their apartment - just wish that was what I saw when I looked out my front window. I try to console myself with the fact that the leaves will change colors here in a couple more months and they will fall off and then new buds will appear the following week.

October in Ohio

Fall break called us East to visit Lonica and Scott for a few days. While we loving going east we hate the fact that you loose an entire day traveling. So while Garth and I left the house at 6:00am we didn't arrive in Columbus until 4:30 and minus one piece of luggage. Garth got the rental car and I filed the missing bag claim and we met Lonica and Scott easily a little after 5:00 thanks to the fact the Columbus' airport is much smaller and easier to navigate than Phoenix's.

After Lonica's great dinner we went around "collecting" bikes from her friends so we could go on a bike ride Thursday morning. Scott had to work in the morning and Garth, Lonica and I had a beautiful bike ride through the neighborhood, down to the Olentangy River and to a lake. It was a crisp fall day with many of the leaves already changing. Garth and I were revealing in the cool weather and thrilled to experience a bit of fall.
Here is the lake
and here is the Olentangy River.

Lonica and I played on the banks of the lake and talked about all the places we want to go and visit while Garth talked on the phone trying to get through a crisis at work back in Phoenix. On the way back to their apartment we got a call telling us that Preston (who had stayed with Raquel and Dave in Mesa for a cross country meet) had missed his plane. He was supposed to arrive at 5:30 that evening but would have to wait until the 2:00 flight and wouldn't be in Columbus until 8:30. He would end up spending the entire first day of his break at Sky Harbor Airport because he didn't realize that his flight first had a stop in Omaha before Chicago. He had a great attitude about it and got all his homework done.
Scott met us back at the house and after lunch we went on a tour of the city. We had to stop and purchase our Ohio State shirts (we were going to the football game on Sat.) and we looked around OSU and the law school where Scott really lives. Then we drove around downtown and the capital.
It was a beautiful evening and we checked out all the statues to the soldiers of the Civil War, Spanish American War, WWI and to all the famous Ohioans who became Presidents (can you name any of the eight?), Generals or just other famous people.
We had to drop Lonica off at her night class and then Scott, Garth and I went to a great place for dinner. Preston finally made it to Ohio and after picking he and Lonica up, we headed to White Castle because Preston hadn't eaten most of the day and one of his requests while he was in Ohio was to go to White Castle. He got 10 White Castle "sliders" and shared two with Scott. Those of you who haven't had the pleasure of eatting at White Castle should know that their hamburgers can be eaten in one bite (as Preston and Scott can attest-they had a contest) and we all decided that they aren't made of real food.
After we all tried to stay awake and talk we decided to just go to bed beause we had a pretty busy schedule for the next couple of days.

The Presidents from Ohio were Hayes, both Harrisons (William and Benjamin), Grant, Garfield, McKinley, Taft and Harding.