10 Apples up on top

Remember the Dr. Seuss book by that title?  I think it was by Theo Leseig, a pseudonym for him. It was fun.

Well, that's what our place is looking like now. Hundreds of apples. Apples, apples everywhere.


Nearly all of the boxes have apples in them.  

 The big empty white box on top of the apples (above) held the apple press.  The apple press is now set up (below). There's a work station for grinding them, for pressing them. The fridge has about 4 gallons of pressed apple juice!!  Go Mikey!  Ten Apples Up on Top!

 

After I took all these photos, and after the GARBAGE DISPOSAL BROKE that was doing such a wonderful job of grinding up the apples, but before I had straightened out all the boxes and sorted things. Mike just started right in and piled boxes of apples on top of boxes of tools and stuff, so there's really no clear distinction between apples and garage stuff.  It's a little more clear now, so I'll have to take another picture of the area after the sort/straighten effort on my part.

Four kinds of apples :  Jonathan, Gala, Yellow Delicious and Granny Smith.  It is SOOOOoooo good!

If you look closely, there are two small hydraulic jacks next to the press. Mike uses those to really PRESS the juice from the pulp.  Pretty ingenious. He has to do only a few simple cranks up and down rather than twist and twist and twist and twist and....well, you get the idea. It really does work a lot better than the ratchet/crank.  Lest you think the place is  unsavory, rest assured he and Pam mopped the table down with bleach between batches, washed bowls and press, etc. It just LOOKS like a disaster right now. The bottles he pours them into for "settling" have gone through the dishwasher. The milk jugs we're using to freeze the juice in have been scrubbed with hot, soapy water.

Fall Shower

Sometimes (with a little help from Pinterest and a co-worker) I get creative!
Baby shower for co-worker.
Fun!

Fall Fell

The apples fell.

The sheep came down main street.

The leaves were and are glorious!

Except for this one.  My poor ash tree out front. Half dead, frozen leaves on the tree.

I have not taken any photos of all the pretty leaves, but they've been great. Cotton woods are ablaze, the fruit trees are aglow...the streets and sidewalks are crunchy and filled with leaves. I pedal my bike through them daily and just love it.




Happy Halloween and happy fall!

Sunday and the drive home, Oct 21 and 22, 2018

Sunday morning was Church.  Special Church.  The Primary Children's Sacrament Meeting Presentation is the culmination of a (almost) year's worth of learning in the Primary. Songs, talks. Nearly every child participates, from the 3 and 4 year olds to the 12 year olds.  I really enjoyed it.  Ella sang in a small ensemble or two and even had a (6 word) solo that she did very well. It was soft and sweet and she did it.  And then Primary sharing time was the kids' opportunities to share their favorite things about General Conference from the previous weeks. They have a really LARGE Primary in the Canyon Springs Ward.  Huge.  Lotsa kids.  Tandy's Primary President, remember.  So she probably wanted to just collapse after church, but instead she came home and cooked us some cheese quesadillas for a light lunch/dinner, packed us some cookies and was said our goodbyes and were off by about 1:30 pm on Sunday.

I did ask Damian and Tandy to place their wagers now on how many times we'd get lost on the way home.  I guessed 2, tandy said 4 and Damian said 6.

Well, the fact of the matter was, were were NEVER lost; however, we did miss the 1604 off ramp. I told Mike to exit, he did, and then he said, "No, I don't think we're supposed to be here,"  and merged back onto to 281.  And then we passed under the overpass labled "1604." Hmmm. So we just went on down to the 410 and over to the 10. No big deal.  The fact is, with all that construction, there is NO signage indicating where the exit for the 1604 even is, so it's not surprising that we missed it. Again. It's kind of a mess over there.  But that's the only time we had any questions or concerns about where we were going the entire time!   THE ENTIRE TIME on our way home.  Smooth sailing all the way.

We drove Sunday afternoon and evening, and made it to Truth or Consequences, NM by about 10 pm.  The rooms at our Travelodge hotel  were adequate and cheap.  Beds fairly comfy and the sheets clean.  Floors were kind of icky - looking.  We didn't even watch any TV. Mike had bought a San Antonio newspaper before we left town and really enjoyed reading the whole thing that night. I went to sleep and slept solidly until about 5:10 a.m.  Mike, on the other hand, was up every 2 hours.  I forgot to mention that he wasn't feeling well on Sunday morning. He kind of had upset tummy and was running to the bathroom quite a lot.  He and Eric left church after Sacrament meeting; Mike to get some Immodium and Eric to get packed and ready to leave. His flight back to Las Vegas was that after noon / evening.  But, by the time we left Damian and Tandy's house on Sunday afternoon, Mike was doing a bit better and we were back to our old icky travel diets before too long. Dr. Pepper, fudge and cookies.  Doesn't sound like anything someone with an upset stomach needs to be eating, does it?

We had breakfast at the hotel around 7 am on Monday the 22nd and hit the road again.  No questions or concerns about which way to go, no close calls with gasoline. We decided to have dinner at Jacob Lake near Grand Canyon.  We'd snacked all day, though. I think I've gained 10 pounds this week.  I don't even want to know.  Ugh.  But it was fun!  Yay. Love that junk food.  Tandy did fix lovely meals while we were there, too, but then things just got busy and we were on the run all the time!

We pulled into Pam's around 8 pm, unloaded her stuff and then headed down the road in Kanarraville and NEARLY hit a few deer that ran across the street in front of us. Luckily, Mike was not going fast and neither was the other car coming in the opposite direction.  We both skidded and both of us came to a complete stop and the deer crossed right between us.  There was only about 5 feet between our car and the other.   We both stayed in our own lanes, but it was good that we both stopped in time and didn't swerve and didn't crunch our vehicles on the deer or each other. Stupid deer.

Mike drove through a small amount of rain in Arizona this afternoon/evening, but really the roads were mostly dry all the way there and back. There had been rain right before us, as we could see that the washes had water in them and sometimes the road was still wet on the sides, but our drive was very uneventful on the way home.  We had cloud cover for a good amount of the drive time, too. So I would say that it was fairly un eventful both there and back, other than directional difficulties and a bit of a gas scare on the way to San Antonio.

We pulled into our drive by about 8:15 pm. on Monday, October 22. Home again, home again, safe and sound. We don't need to drive to San Antonio again. We'll fly next time.  But it was a fun trip and we're so glad to be home safe and sound.  I think Mike drove 9/10 of the time. He is a driving machine.  And we listened to three volumes of "Children of the Promise" by Dean Hughes, as well as a Louis L'amour novel AND 2/3 of of Josi Kilpak culinary mystery ("Rocky Road").

Saturday, October 20, 2018. San Antonio

Saturday is a special day, it's the day we get ready for Sunday.
Among other things.  But Mike and I are on "vacation" so we slept in.  I heard Braeden come in to his bedroom around 7:30 or 8 am (and we were still in bed, though I was awake by then.  Their whole family was going to go clean the chapel because it was their turn. There should have been other families there to help, but there were not. I wish I would have just got up and got Mike up and gone and helped them.  There were supposed to be about 4 other assigned families. Little Liebhardt's were the only ones who showed up.

Ella had a soccer game that day.  She had to be at her field (No Where close to their home, but  I have no idea where we were-- Lady Bird Johnson Recreation Fields--). Lexi had a band competition that day at yet another stadium but it was fairly close to the Recreation center.  She had to be dropped off at 1-ish at her school.  So it was a "divide and conquer" kind of Day.  Tandy took Damian's truck and took Lexi to her school, which was where I thought the band competition was, but it was not.  It was at a school district stadium.  It's all so complicated. Damian took the rest of us with him to Ella's soccer field.  He'd never been there before. It's a huge recreation area with many fields.  We were prepared with camp chairs and jackets, but it was fairly mild and sometimes the sun even came out. For a minute or two.  But it was chilly when the sun went behind the clouds.

Ella's soccer game began at 1:30 and Tandy seemed to think she'd get there close to the time that the game started, and she was there fairly close to the beginning.  Ella's team (they are all about 10 and 11 years old) were ALL about 6 to 12 inches taller than the girls on the other team they were playing.  They played with ONE referee, which is highly unusual, but it happened anyway.  They played on a much larger field than they were used to playing on, AND the wind was an issue at times.  Oh well. Ella's team did win with a score of about 6 to 2 I think.

Ella didn't play goalkeeper, but she was warming up in that position.

After that, Eric had asked that we be able to eat at yet another Texas institution, that one being "Whataburger." They happen to be one of the sponsors of Lexi's marching band.  And the band thing was next; however, there were complications in that Damian had purchased some concert tickets quite some time ago with the intent of taking his whole family to an out door country music concert. Only it was at the same time as Lexi's competition and ( of course) clear across town.  We had come to see Lexi perform in the competition.  Damian didn't really want to waste all the tickets. So after we we all ate at Whataburger for a very late lunch at 3 pm (good burgers and fries), Damian took Ella and went to the concert in his truck and the rest of us went to the UIL Marching Band Competion at Heroes Stadium.  We stayed from about 3:30 to 6:30 and saw about 7 or so bands perform. They were all excellent. I closed my eyes that night as I was going to sleep and saw twirling flags of the many color guard kids we saw for those hours of competition. Flags and marching feet danced acrossed my eyelids as I tried to sleep that night.  They are amazing musicians and athletes.  Big bands, not-so-big bands, but all were pretty dang good. They do take it seriously here, you know. That and football.

So, Soccer and band. That filled up the day.  THEN Tandy had to bake about 200 cookies for primary children and their special guests for church the next day.  She'd promised that if they (Primary Children) brought a guest to the Primary Children's Sacrament Meeting Presentation, they would have a treat.  So Eric and I helped her with that.  Ella and Damian came back fairly late from the concert, as it got smokey and a bit too wild to have your 10 year old daughter at, so they left it early and yet were home later than us because of the drive, you know...and it started after we were out of the band competition, so it may have been possible to do both...but we were so tired and poor Tandy was hauling all of us around... Oh, their lives are so complicated and busy, it just exhausts me to even think about it.

Above: Eric and Tandy baking cookies. Do you even know anybody besides Tandy who owns two KitchenAid mixers??? I wish I would have taken a photo of all the finished cookies.  I think 215 was the final count. Or something close to that. And all perfect.

That night, I decided to take a little dip in the pool.  But only for about 5 seconds.  Just for fun and excitement.  Why not?  I had to wash my hair for church the next day, anyway. ;-)  Eric took a video. I'm sure he'll share if you ask him too. I actually jumped in twice. I'd handed my phone to Braeden to take a photo and when I got out, he said, "Oh! I missed it!"  So I did it again. Invigorating. Yes, the nice hot shower afterward felt delightful and I was ready to drop into bed. ZZZzzzz

The pool was 64 degrees F.

Final number of the evening, Claudia Taylor Johnson High School Marching Band. Go Jaguars!  Lexi's down there somewhere.

Outside Whataburger.  Why do they always look like this??? !!

That was a lot of musicians. Bus loads. Dozens of bus loads.

Sorry the pictures are out of order.