Fall things -Fall time-Fall-Fall - and more Fall....

Fall has come and gone.  This year I notice that leaves on the trees (or most of them) have fallen before the actual coldest weather has arrived.  That is good, for the trees.  Or so I have been told.

View during the fall time from our living room

It was beautiful to watch the leaves this fall. Actually the photos do not do the view from our front windows justice. This view is a blessing!

the small pond in the herb garden

Although the weather around here is getting colder, and winter is not far away, today is really not that bad.  The past several days, only about an hour or two away they received from 1 inch to about 8 inches of snow.  We did not get any snow, which I am glad for.  I am really not ready emotionally for winter.  Not looking forward to driving around in it.

Around here, on the farm, I am more ready than I have been in other years.  I  have my gardens cleaned out, the garden boxes are ready for spring.  That is huge for me.  That means in the spring I will only have a little bit of work to do when preparing the garden.  I love that I have finally made it to that point!  Life has been so busy for so long that I have always ran behind at preparing the boxes for the fall.  Maybe because of this, I might be able to finally get my herb garden cleaned up this spring!

Scott and I was able to go out on a date a few weeks ago, a rare thing for us.  He has been working 12 hour shifts for months, and although the extra money has helped pay some bills, the time apart from him is not welcoming.  

So the plant he works in, shut down for opening gun season on deer, (michigan) and that gave him a extra day off.  That Friday we went to Ft Wayne, saw a movie-a first for us for years!  The cost to get into the movie was not bad, but the cost of popcorn and a pop-which we shared-was as much as the tickets to the movie!  There were only about 6 other couples in the movie theater, so we had our choice of seats!  That was nice.

After that we went to our daughter, Nalani's studio.   

Nalani working on the wheel...

We got to work on the potters wheel, and we are not as good at that as I remembered or thought we were, from high school! 

me struggling with putting the wheel together! 

 I was going for a big mug.  I just got it like I liked, then the top part would fall off.  So I thought, ok, a short mug-coffee cup style.  Then it would do the same thing.  I was to the size of a tea cup, when it totally collapsed.  I did this same thing 3 times.  

down to a tea cup! 

was at a mug, then here at a coffee sup size which you can see fell in on the one side! 

 Nalani had to rescue me.

Nalani working on her own wheel and on a project.  

Below are some of Nalanis art work...

After being in the studio for a few hours, we finished up our 'mugs' and cleaned up then took Nalani out to dinner.  I should have called somewhere for reservations, on a Friday night, in Ft wayne, you will wait for about 45 minutes.  

So we went somewhere more simple, Panda Express.  

After dinner,  Nalani went back to the studio, and we went onto a hotel.  We had decided to stay at a hotel so we could enjoy the  pool and hot tub.  The Hot tub was great, turned up hot enough.  But the pool was freezing.  I like cold-but it was too cold even for me!  I could not even walk more than about knee high.  It was so cold that it was cooling my core body temperature too much!  

So we sat on the steps of the pool, disappointed with it being so cold. Unable to enjoy the pool, we just enjoyed the hot tub.  But you can only sit in a hot tub just so long.  When I had made the reservations, I stressed to them the ONLY reason we were staying at a hotel, was for the pool and hot tub.  Other than that, we would not spend the money!  We awoke early and left the hotel for home, about 5 am.  Today was church day.  Scott had begun to feel poorly, prob from the freezing pool-so we did not go to church-again. 

That following monday I called and spoke with the general manager, and asked him what the temperature of the pool is to be set at.  He said he would check the records to what it was set at (on paper) I told him it did not matter what the staff put down on paper, believe me, it was freezing.  He thanked me for letting him know, and said he would follow up on it, that maybe something was not working correctly.  He also gave us a re-do day, of our choice.  I was happy about that.  After we get to have the re-do day, I will let you know in a future post where this hotel is.   I want to honor them, since they obviously are good enough to make sure their customers are happy.  In todays world, that is rare.

My car has bit the dust, the transmission might be going out, which would be a HUGE issue financially.  Things are really changing, and changing fast in my life with certain things and 'work' I do.  Some good, some awful, but then, I have went thru a lot of awful for the last couple of years, so I guess I am use to that!

Yesterday was Hanukkah and we had a dinner here at our home.

Candles were lit, and dinner was served.

We had a good time, all 5 grand children were here, and bad grandma-I did not get a new group photo!  Bummer!