Wonderful Weekend

As I said in a previous post, the weekend of October 27-30th was a wonderful one for me. My brother, Brigham, was staying with us and Wood and Woodine came to visit. They really took a load off me. I planned a menu and shopped for groceries the day before but then the majority of the cooking was done by others, the majority of clean up too, which was my favorite. I'm not a fan of dishes. I am also not a queen of baking. My idea of dessert is a scoop of ice cream, you can put it on bananas and add some chocolate syrup if you really want to. But one night Brigham made chocolate chip cookies. And another night Wood made Aunt Edy's Oatmeal Coconut cookies. He also undertook this venture with a 3 year old assistant. (he has way more patience than I do). They were delicious cookies and were eaten very quickly. I also had the chance to expose the aunt and uncles to some delicious "butters". Friday, before Wood and Woodine arrived, the kids had off school so we ventured out to "Amish Country" with Brigham, my sister Brinn and her husband Kent and visited "Kitchen Kettle Village". There they have a store which makes it's own jellies, jams, butters, preserves, relishes, and salsa. They have tons of choices (stuff you never thought would be jellied) and you can sample all of them on little oyster crackers. My favorite were the preserves and butters (which is like apple butter not dairy butter). I ended up buying "Peanutbutter schmier" (it's a really sweet sort of carmely peanut butter, "Pumpkin butter", and "Peach butter" (my personal favorite). Friday night we ate potato broccoli cheese soup and rolls and all were able to try the different butters. On Suday I was able to expose Wood and Woodine to a traditional PA Dutch meal of pork roast and saurkraut. It's actually the traditional meal eaten on New Year's Day. I was nervous they wouldn't like the saurkraut but everyone loved it.


The kids had a wonderful time as well. They boys really enjoyed playing long "grown-up" games like Risk and Settlers that I don't agree to play very often (like 2x per year, maybe). It also helped keep them busy while I worked on the "wedding quilt". We watched a movie, Disney's Haunted Mansion, which Ainsley is still talking about. She couldn't really figure why this woman's head (a gypsy) was in a crystal ball and why they carried her around. Ainsley was read to, played games like Chutes and Ladders and My Little Pony Memory and the boys got to play Uncle Brigham's playstation. It was a weekend where everyone stayed very much entertained. We also got to talk to Daniel on speakerphone which made his day as well. He wished he could have been here with everyone but I think he was happy to hear everyone's voices and feel like he was part of our weekend too.

I know Woodine posted a picture of this already but for those from my circle - I have to post them again. Ainsley is a hoot and you never know what she is going to come up with. While we were cleaning up the kitchen one night, she opened up the cabinet under the sink, grabbed a pair of yellow dish gloves, sat in the middle of the floor and proceeded to put them on like a pair of socks. What she ended up with was "chicken feet".
On Saturday while Ainsley was at a Halloween party in a little town called Ephrata, we went to the "Ten Thousand Villages" store. This is a company that works with villages in developing nations helping to market their products with a "fair market value". They also help set up schools and health clinics in these villages. Their store sells all these imported products from jewelry, to instruments, to figurines, to carpets, to music, to handmade stationary, to toys etc.... We had a good time looking at all the interesting products and which countries they came from. It was also a neat time of year to visit because they have nativities from around the world displayed for sale. (Incidently Travis applied for a job with this company sometime back. We wished he was working for them now and he and Sarah lived only 15 minutes away.) While we were there I was looking at the international music seeing if there would be anything interesting to send to Daniel. I found a cd entitled "Arabic Groove". Since Daniel loves to get his "Groove ON" I thought this might be an appropriate cd. I also thought he would get a kick out of the title. It has a definite middle eastern sound with a modern pop twist. I thought it would be fun for him to listen to since he is surrounded by that culture even if he doesn't get to see or hear it from behind the base walls.