Everything Glorious

A fall weekend.

Is there anything more beautiful?

The leaves are turning fast now and the landscape all around us is positively golden.

I think because we've had so much rain recently the leaves are dropping much more quickly than they did last year, but still...glorious.

Sunday afternoon we took the little car for a spin up to Highpoint which is truly the highest point in New Jersey.

Clever name, isn't it?

We've been so lucky these past couple of weekends.

In spite of having two weeks filled with rainy days the weekends have been absolutely crystal clear.

Glorious.

It was perfect convertible weather.

As long as you were wearing a scarf around your neck and a fleece around your middle and a blanket across your legs I mean.

That's my definition of great convertible weather...

hot air blowing on you is no fun but the cool air is glorious.

We didn't hike on Sunday but I did hop out and snap a picture of the view.

I think next weekend will be close to the peak colors.

I know.

New Jersey?

Who'd a thunk it?

This morning I sat outside on my front porch and watched the sunrise.

The sky was a little bit pink...

then pinker still...

then golden...

a blaze of sunshine and happiness.

I couldn't help but think of the David Crowder song, Everything Glorious.

I wonder if watching the sunrise on a golden fall morning inspired the lyrics?

Hoping your Monday is glorious too.

I'm it again?

I've played a lot of blog tag lately so what's one more? One of my favorite bloggers, Taylor at The Lumberjack's Wife, tagged me with 8 questions which I'm answering today. Everyone go say hi to Taylor...she makes me laugh every single day.

1. What is one food you detest?

Sadly I can only think of one-liver. Oh wait-haggis. And river eels. I've never actually eaten them but hubs picture of the river eels he ate while in China makes me gag just a little. Anyone else think Survivor when they see this photo?

2. What is your perfect day?

A sunny day at the beach with my family all around.

A sunny day in London with my family all around.

Any day in London.

3. If you could take a vacation next week where would you go?

If you read here regularly you will be shocked by my answer.

Italy.

4. What are five of your favorite blogs?

• The Lumberjacks Wife (the tagger)
• Sincerely Shannon (my daughter)
• Billy Coffey
• Carpool Queen
• It's Not Easy Being Queen

5. What are your thoughts on the facebook?

um, I like it.

6. Are your parents technological goobers like mine?

I think she means am I a technological goober like her parents since her parents and I are of a similar generation. Ahem.

No I am not a technological goober. My children may disagree but I must remind them I started a blog without any kid assistance. I have also successfully loaded a couple thousand songs onto my ipod, not two like Taylor's dad who btw I'm sure is not an actual goober. I got an ipad for my birthday and am figuring that out all by myself too. I may not get the technology as quickly as my kids do but I try.

7. If you had to choose between losing 15 pounds forever but never putting makeup on again, or having perfect skin but putting on 15 pounds permanently what would it be?

losing 15 pounds permanently

8. What is your best recipe (so I can steal)?

I don't have a 'best' recipe but I have a few I like a lot. This time of year one of my faves is tortilla soup which is delish. Email me if you'd like it sent your way.

Enjoy your Sunday....Go Phillies!

Show us Where you Live-The Kitchen

I know.

Two posts on a Friday but nobody actually reads blogs on Fridays anyway do they?

I wanted to link up with Kelly's Korner today for the Show Us Your Life series.

Today people are posting pictures of their kitchens...why not add yours?

I love my kitchen and spend more time there than anywhere else in my house.

I love how open it feels and I love the color.

Its not easy to take great pictures in there though because of the lighting.

We have recessed lighting and over the sink lighting and over the island lighting and over the table lighting.

Plus the kitchen opens up into my family room which has two story ceilings and big windows so the lighting is tricky.

Plus I stink at photography and have a puny camera.

Okay, I think I'm done with excuses now.

One of the things that convinced me this house should be mine was the island...

It's an unusual shape, a pentagon.

I like the angles and I love the granite, both the color and for clean up.

I have not allowed the island to become a dumping ground for mail or anything else.

Yay me!

Well, yay hubs because he's all over that.

I like to keep the island clear with the exception of a centerpiece of some sort.

Right now I have big pumpkin pie scented candles in hurricane jars with a fall berry wreath around the center jar.

The previous owners did not have a back splash behind the stove so I've put a big tray there for now which I love.

We may just leave it like that.

One of our house guests in England bought this tray for me after I took her to Windsor Castle. It's lovely and reminds me of England and good friends both.

I have some of my favorite pottery on top of my cabinets.

These came from a little town in Italy called Nove which is not far from Verona...

Here is a different view looking into our back hallway from my kitchen sink...

I also love the desk and cabinet above it which is filled with guess what?

More pottery.

Seriously, does anyone else feel happy just looking at this Fig pitcher?

We have a digital photo frame on the desk and when my girls are home we play a game where every time you walk by the frame you have to shout out the location of the current picture.

I think it's true that in many ways the kitchen is the heart of the home.

One of the reasons I love fall so much is all the cooking and celebrating and family togetherness it brings... weekend football games, daughters popping home for a few days of break and of course Thanksgiving dinner.

Plus the colors of fall match my house which is just a little icing on the cake.

Fun and Games

I had to participate in Flashback Friday today because this week's prompt is all about games from your growing up years. My family will tell you I like to play games. I also like to follow the rules when I play games and they sometimes refer to me as the game nazi. Whatever.

Growing up we didn't have a family game night that I can remember but my younger sister and I shared a room and played lots of games. We especially liked Trouble, Sorry, Clue, and Go For Broke. And one of my absolute favorites was a game called Masterpiece where you bought and sold art which may or may not have been forged.

I do remember a game called Hands Down where you were dealt a few cards and when you got a certain combination you slapped the plastic hand on the board. That one stressed out the 10 year old me. I didn't quite have a handle on my competitive nature back then.

My family might say this is an area that could perhaps still use some work.

How many of you remember the game called Cootie? It was essentially a race to put together a plastic bug. Whoohoo! But it was fun and that word cootie took on a life of its own when I was a kid. Telling someone they had 'cooties' was about the meanest thing you could say. It was the equivalent of saying they had fleas or a contagious disease. Sigh. Times do go a-changing don't they?

My parents liked to work jigsaw puzzles and every now and then they'd set up a puzzle on a card table in our living room. My mom always got a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas and we'd all help put it together. We didn't use our living room except on special occasions and I loved sitting out there in front of the fireplace as family members rotated in and out around the table. Sometimes you need to walk away from a jigsaw puzzle and come back with a fresh eye.

In my own family we usually work a jigsaw puzzle when we take a beach or mountain holiday. We find a place to set one up and work on it all week long. I still like puzzles of all kinds and since getting my Ipad am loving Words with Friends. If you play, email me your screen name and I'll look for you. Unless I've scared you off with all this talk of competition.

We also played loads of outside games back in the day, like Freeze Tag, Hide and Seek, and Capture the Flag. Our neighborhood had lots of kids of every age and we all played these games together. My favorite was Kick the Can...we'd divide into teams and then put a #10 can in the middle of our street and would run and hide two or three streets over. The sense of freedom was something I will never forget.

My sister and I had big imaginations and we played lots of make-believe games with our across the street neighbors. One of our favorites we called Naugahyde which essentially involved running and hiding from a monster by that name. I never thought much about it until I was sharing this with my hubs family and they looked at me and said, 'Naugahyde? Like the fake leather upholstery fabric?" Don't ask me how we turned this into a scary game of chase but we did. Like I said, we had big imaginations.

I played a lot of games with my girls growing up. My least favorite was Candy Land and I used to stack the deck so that darn picture card wouldn't turn up at the end and send the near winner all the way back to the start. I know I said I'm a rule follower but I'm also a big believer in mama maintaining her sanity. Which reminds me that my girls used to play Aggravation and they had a song they'd sing while we played and it was, well, aggravating.

My favorite game to play when my girls were growing up was Pretty Pretty Princess. Hubs would play too and was a good sport. We also liked Barbie Dream Date, Kerplunk, Mastermind and Mancala. We played Sorry too although my oldest was too tender hearted to ever send anyone back to their start so that one often ended with her in tears. She is ruthless in Monopoly though so go figure. When my girls were teens we spent many an evening sitting around the kitchen table playing Hearts. Hubs would play too and also act as DJ because music was essential and made it more fun...we all loved those times.

I confess I still like to play games. We went thru the Trivial Pursuit phase and the Pictionary phase but these days my favorites are Scrabble, Scattergories, Mexican Train Dominoes, and Backgammon. My hubs will play cards with me if I pester him but he's not a big game player unless I'm suggesting golf or pool. When we get together with extended family on either side we play games like Outburst, Cranium, and Catchphrase.

I really do think that playing games is good for the heart and soul of a family. Its fun together time and a place where memories are made. As the saying goes...the family that plays together stays together. It's kinda true.

For more Flashback Friday posts visit Mocha with Linda by clicking on the button at the top of this post ...or better yet, share your own flashback and then link to the party.

This was not Walt's Disney

So my hubs got home a little late last night and I had planned for him to

cook fish on the grill for dinner.

He likes to grill and is always happy to cook outdoors even when he works late.

We normally cook outside every couple of days but haven't grilled in over a week due to rain, travel, eating out, rain and oh yeah, rain.

He was going to light the grill before changing his clothes so out into the

dark, drizzling night he went.

We keep our grill completely covered when not in use.

Imagine hub's surprise when he uncovered and opened the grill only to discover that a mama mouse had made a nest down in the very bottom sometime this week.

And had babies.

Ewwwww!!!

Ew.Ew.Ew.Ew.Ew.

Don't bother sending me emails and comments telling me how cute they are.

They are not.

Especially not in the bottom of your grill.

He told me to come look but did I mention, Ew. Ew. Ew.

Not a fan of mice anywhere but especially not in the bottom of the grill.

So he had to remove them but before he could get the mama in the bucket she took off .

With most of her babies attached.

Ew.

Ewww.

I'm just not sure I'm making my point.

Ewwww!!

One little babe was left behind so hubs scooped him out and deposited

him in the woods where I'm sure he met his fate.

Circle of life people.

Then of course the grill had to be scoured.

Detoxed.

Taken apart.

Lit on fire.

Scoured some more.

Detoxed again.

Hubs was still in his work clothes.

It was drizzling.

Its really really dark here.

I had to cook the fish in the oven which I don't like to do

because it makes the house smell fishy.

Good times.

Things happen when you live in the woods.

Things involving critters.

It turned really cool here this week.

And when it turns cold, creatures who were perfectly happy living outdoors start looking for warm places to call home.

Remind me again why are we living in the woods?

Thank goodness I married a boy scout.

October skies

I normally answer the Random Dozen on Wednesdays and because this week was Lid's birthday she asked folks to submit questions as her birthday gift.

I'm sure it's a struggle to come up with twelve random questions on a weekly basis and she deserved a break on her birthday.

Several of the questions this week were similar to ones I recently answered in a Q & A here and several others had a birthday theme.

I think we can all agree I've exhausted the subject of birthdays on my blog recently so I'm going to take the day off and talk about something else.

Like fall.

Now there's a topic that hasn't been mentioned much anywhere recently.

I never used to talk about the weather but it seems like I pretty much give a weather report at least once a week here.

Such is the life of an empty nester with no job, too much time on her hands, and all that blank Internet paper to fill.

Who else here loves fall?

Our backyard is woods pretty much as far as the eye can see.

We have a flat grassy back lawn with a big rock wall all the way round then a steep hill behind that is covered in woods.

I have never actually fully explored these woods but my hubs did go all the way to the top one day and said the view down the other side is a little bit like The Lion King.

Except of course without the lions.

Although, apparently there are mountain lions here and bobcats too, but no lions of the Simba variety because hey, this is NJ.

The main reason I don't venture up into our woods is because we have bear living there.

We know this because we see them on a regular basis.

Just yesterday my neighbor and I were emailing back and forth about something and she added, 'oh, and I just saw the baby bear run up your driveway.'

We see him pretty often and recently we saw two teenage brother bears having a little wrestling match right at the edge of our woods.

It was like a slap fest and was very cute and super entertaining to watch but only because we were sitting safely in our kitchen.

And no, I did not get close enough to actually verify the gender but they behaved exactly like two teenage brothers so we're going with that.

Anyway, this time of year is my favorite and I love watching the trees turn.

Our backyard gets a little more golden every day and I never get tired of looking at the color.

This particular little section of trees is just beautiful...

Incidentally, this photo is au natural and by that I mean no photo shop.

For one thing it wasn't necessary and for 2. I don't know how.

How about that sky?

We snapped this on Saturday just before heading out to meet up with friends who'd invited us to the local high school football game.

It was a positively gorgeous day (there's your weather update) and hubs and I racked our brains and concluded we hadn't been to a high school game since the early 80's.

I know.

Some of you reading here weren't even born in the early 80's.

Keep in mind that my own girls attended an International School in the UK and the school did not have a football team.

Well, they had a futbol team but not a football team if you know what I mean so no games.

Plenty of matches though.

Okay, I'll stop.

I learned something about myself last weekend.

I discovered that I can get all caught up in a high school game even when I no longer have kids that age living at home.

Nor do I need to know a single player on the team or even the parent of a player on the team.

My stomach was in an absolute knot by the end of the game which we won in the very last seconds.

By we I mean our town's high school to which I have zero connection but still...Go us!

We got home just in time to turn on the Tennessee-LSU game and I think we just won't talk about that.

I can't remember a crazier ending to a game...Tennessee was celebrating their most unlikely win when they were called back for a do-over because they had too many players on the field.

Agghhh!

We lost.

And by we I mean Tennessee, a team I adopted thru marriage but hey, I dare you to go to just one game in their stadium and then tell me it doesn't rank right up there as one of the most fun afternoons of your life.

Over 100,000 screaming fans dressed in a blaze of orange....

it doesn't get more 'fall' than that.

I should've called shotgun

We had a pretty low key weekend here which involved some football and some gorgeous fall weather. Oh, and a little side trek to the local Emergency Room for something extremely ridiculous but which I will share with you anyway because what are blogs for if not to share stupid stuff that happens to us? Stuff that we probably wouldn't even be mentioning had we not waited three days to go to the Emergency Room? To preface this story, when I told daughter2 what happened I said, "You aren't having trouble believing this are you?" And she said no. Sigh. When it comes to grace I'm predictable.

Early last week a minor little incident occurred...nothing really. I was getting in to the back seat of a friend's van and as she turned to speak to someone parked beside her the door closed on my hand. But not hard...she didn't slam the door, it just kinda fell closed and it barely hurt. Turns out that's because it crushed the band of my engagement ring instead of my knuckle. I mean it hurt a little but I didn't even mention it to my friend because I really thought it wasn't any big deal. And I didn't mention it to my hubs either because I really wasn't worried. While I couldn't get the ring off right away, I could twist it and move it a bit so I figured I'd just let everything calm down for a day or so and then I'd get some dish soap or vegetable oil and slide it right off. Wednesday and Thursday my knuckle still looked a little swollen so I told myself Friday was the day I had to deal with it and I set out in earnest to get the ring off. (No lectures please...my husband, the local jeweler, the hospital registrar, three er nurses, the x-ray tech, and the ER doc himself have all got that covered.) Anyway, it wouldn't budge using the usual techniques for getting a tight ring off your hand so I did what any normal person would do and I googled it. There was a step by step guide to ring removal and guess what the first thing they suggested was? Windex! I guess the dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding was onto something.

They had a few other suggestions and the last one was to slide a piece of dental floss under the ring, wrap it all the way up your finger and then start unwinding. The floss is supposed to force the ring upwards and off. Yeah. Not happening. And there are no pictures because hello, I was down to one hand at this point. Should you ever need it you can see the dental floss trick here.

The all knowing Google said if this didn't work get thee to a jeweler and they'd cut it off. Sob. But what was I going to do (besides feel like an idiot?) so off I went to a local jeweler who gasped and informed me they hadn't done that in about 20 years. You know, because of the blood. Huh? There's going to be blood? I need the ring cut off, not my finger. Anyway, she was quite concerned and said I needed to get to the ER right away because a finger could suddenly just swell up and then I'd have real problems. Oh bother.

I called hubs en route to the ER and attempted to casually drop this all into the conversation in a kind of, "How's your day, what do you want to do about dinner and, oh by the way, I'm on my way to the ER to have my rings cut off, but there's really nothing at all to worry about." Hubs knows me and I think said something along the lines of, "Whatever."

Thankfully it was fairly quiet in the ER and the registrar got the nurse who informed me it would probably have to be cut off but they can't just do that without registering me so into the system I went. As a side note, the registrar asked me how it happened and when I told her it was shut in a car door she said, and I quote, "Oh, well then they're going to file that with your car insurance." When she saw my look of confusion she added, "Oh don't worry, your rates won't go up. NJ is a no-fault state." Okay. But still, what does that have to do with my injury?

Anyhoo, after they took my MEDICAL insurance info I was escorted back with the folks who were having real emergencies as opposed to my cartoon emergency and after the nurse tortured me with the string thing she went to get the doc and the saw and he tortured me some more trying to cut through my solid gold band. And then he said that even though my wedding band hadn't been touched it had to come off too because after all this 'trauma' my knuckle was just getting bigger and bigger and he thought my wedding band was soon going to cause a circulation issue. Fabulous. He tried to use the 'hand saw' but it wouldn't go through my band so he had to get the motorized saw. Finally, after many more torturous minutes he broke through the band and I wanted to cry from the relief. The doc looked again at my hand and said maybe I'd better get an x-ray just to be sure it wasn't broken because it surely was swollen and now also bruised so off I went to x-ray to re-tell the story one more time and learn that my finger was not broken.

I know I should have been happy at that point but instead of feeling happy I kinda wanted to cry thinking about my wedding ring sawed in half. I've been married for 26 years and I cannot even remember the last time I took my wedding ring off. I take my diamond off for gardening and such but I never take my wedding band off. I don't want a new band. I want my original 1984 band that we bought when we were young and crazy in love and didn't have two nickels to rub together. I know it's just a ring but Whaaaa!!