Summers End

I have gotten out of the habit of posting and am making an effort to choose to find the time to update more regularly.

We certainly had a nice summer this year. The definite highlight was a trip to Colorado to see my sister and brother-in-law, nieces and nephew and quite a lot of my extended family. It was also the first time Don and I traveled together on a plane and taken a vacation to see family. It was a great trip, we had many great adventures and loved seeing everyone. It was a good chance to catch up and have crazy fun family time. We especially enjoyed visiting the cabin, summiting pikes peak and just spending time with everyone. Our flat-land lungs did appreciate coming home though!

Once home, it was back to the work grind and despite the calendar telling us, it sure didn't seem like September out. We had many sunny warm days and were certainly enjoying the extra summer. This past week the rain has come back. Living here it is a given that winter will come and the rain will start. It is the trade off we have for getting to enjoy the beautiful green. It can be a bit daunting though to wake up to rain, have rain all day, and fall asleep to rain for days (ok, months) on end.

We did take advantage of the extra summer and participated in a new event in our town this year called The Draggin' the Gut Festival. In our little town the common vernacular for "cruising the main drag" was "draggin' the gut." 20 or 30 years ago the town decided this was a bad thing and passed an anti-cruising law, complete with road signs: " Driving up and down this road more than 3 times in a one hour period between the hours of...." You get the idea. So the festival was sort of a return to the golden years of draggin' the gut as well as a benefit for the local food bank. There were bands playing 60's era music on several side streets (closed off to traffic), a sock hop and live band at the McMennamins, free movies and of course a group cruise for several hours at the end of the night. We got our Ghia all shined up and headed out. It was a BLAST!!!!! We danced to some music, looked at all types of cars and dragged the gut ourselves! It was a huge turn out and seemed a success. We are looking forward to next year already!

Now we find ourselves nearly falling into November and are beginning to plan for Thanksgiving, on the hunt for good recipes with new and interesting flavors to try...we will see what we can come up with.