Birthday, Ghosts & Corn

First of all, I need to thank everyone who made my birthday a special day. It was pretty quiet, being a Sunday and all but we had home teachers and visiting teachers come. The home teachers were just making their monthly rounds, the visiting teachers actually knew it was my birthday and stopped by to see me. They had actually brought me something a month ago, thinking my birthday was Sep. 10th but that's ok. Two presents never hurt! Jason and Eli also surprised us with a visit. He seems to always know when we're about to serve cheesecake. This was not the first time he showed up unannounced just as it was about to come out of the fridge. So, thanks to all for the phone calls, cards, and gifts! Now I need to go find some time to do some reading.


I also had my book club this week, but let me back up a couple days. Every year about this time a little "ghost" comes creeping through the neighborhood delivering goodies to our porch. We are then asked to do the same to 3 other homes. So, I decided to whip up a batch of cookies that we could use to deliver to 3 houses and I could also take some to my book club. Then I put the girls in charge of getting them delivered while I was gone. After I got home Brandon showed me the pictures on the camera he had taken of them. Apparently they thought they needed to camouflage themselves to deliver the goodies. I don't know why Sophie looks like she's about to attack, though.


Our latest conquest in becoming self-sufficient was to make cornmeal. The corn we grew in our garden this year didn't turn out too great. So, we just let it get old, dried the kernels, and then milled them. We got to enjoy some cornbread for dinner the other night. Have you heard of "farm to table" dinners that are catching on these days? Well, this is our "garden to table" dinner.

Lastly, we received some good news today. Sophie's expander is working! So she doesn't have to turn it anymore -- except one turn per week to keep it from collapsing. She was pretty excited when she got the news. We don't have to go back for a whole month!