Gladitudes...Time For the Fall Banner

Good Morning! Thank you again, Amber for this kicky set of gladdy mcbannerisms. It's with mixed feelers that I put this banner up. If I put it up, it means that I'm saying g'bye to summer. And really, we've had a very nice summer. A summer full of trips and time spent with wonderful folk. A summer full of a lot of nothing. Except reading and enjoying. And lots of sunshine. A summer of occasional boredom, and time when we got under each other's skin b/c of the ubercloseness the time off from school brings.


It means that I concede to shorter, alas, rainier days. Days when it's so easy to sleep in b/c misty moisty is the morning and cloudy is the weather. Days that put me in RHonda for hours on end, commuting to both schools. And activities. And pumpkin spice lattes. And mulling spices candles,.And snuggling as I knit and watch football games. And going to sport activities and trying out for and rehearsing for plays. And school. This week, finally, you might be saying to yourself my daughter starts middle school.

So that's a little of what fall brings to me. And I'm glad for all of it.

Here are a few pictures of some end of summer glads...

This is all that is left after picking blackberries and making scones with them. I had never made scones before. I think my fam liked them more than I did. Still...fun to go from garden to oven. Drama Girl helped me make them. We don't really have a recipe. I had some Krusteaz pancake mix, so I used Apple damaged and broken as she is to look up the website. Sure enough, there was a scone recipe on their site.

Voila. I shouldn't tell you that it took our family of 4 only one day to go thru these. So I won't.

Pretend this picture is right-side up, will you? Thanks. As some of you who are daughters or have daughters know, some days are better than others especially when they're between 11-13 . There are times when I know I am the last person this beautiful girl wants to be with or worse, be seen with, and alas...sometimes I'm a little weary of the eye-rolling and my permanent-it-seems "wrong" status. So, I'm especially gladdy for times when we can hug and play and just enjoy the good, albeit smelly, affections of a geriatric Dachshund.

The Bayview Farmer's Market on South Whidbey Island makes me glad. We like to get cheeeese, Grommit, and often a pie. This time the pie was nixed due to the scones. But we made up for it by purchasing a loaf of potato onion bread. The HERbal tea pic is a salute to my Island Girls. Whidbey is lurvely...but it's got some granola-to-the-nth-degree folks. We had a chuckle over them again last weekend.


Last night, Big took me to see Wicked. There are many things about this man which make me glad, and this is one of them. My man is not a handy man. He is not a gardener extraordinaire. He is not a purveyor of all things NASCAR. But he IS someone who lurves the theater and musicals almost as much as I do. When we were first married and had NO money what-so-ever, we used his frequent flyer miles and went to London. Of course having no money, we stayed on the cheap. But he had gone to London and other places in Western Europe with a band in high school, and had always wanted to go back. We scraped together the same amount it would've taken for us to go have pizza at a local pub, and were able to go see Miss Saigon in the nose bleedingest seats ever at the (I believe it's called) the Royal Theater on Drury Lane. We've been hooked on musicals and, to a lesser degree, plays ever since then. Wicked was sooooo amazing. I was glad to get to go alone with Big, but I can totally see me trying to save up again to take Drama Girl. Such good girl-power-friendship messages. And the music? Wickedly good. I fear I am a fan second only to our friend Tiffani, at Bears and Belles.
And last...I'm glad for some planned out romance by my hubs. He took me to 13 Coins. This picture is right outside their parking lot. With apologies to Jenster, I had to have a picture, even if it was on my no-megapixel phone. Isn't the Space Needle pretty? 13 Coins is a Seattle landmark, and I'd describe it as a 60's-esque restaurant/club which was 90% elegant and 10% dive. Big and I sat in a big leather "sweetheart" booth, facing the bar. It was awesome. So we split a spinach salad and a dungeoness crab omelet.

And we were veddy, veddy glad.