We Texans have a lot to brag about and to be proud of, but whenI see all of the colors of fall foliage in other states, I’m thinking we need to keep quiet. Our travels didn’t take us as far east as many go each year to see breath-taking sites, but there are certainly many photo stops along the Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa highways. Fall is definitely a season that I wish we could “see” a bit more of each year from our front porch!

I invite you to share your fall foliage photos with me! Let’s begin:

Our visit with family and friends in Iowa was wonderful. We enjoyed good food at home and out — especially good was a family style breakfast at a German restaurant in the Amana’s Colony nearby. Their pancakes are more like crepes. Jackie took some vacation time to be with us and she ventured out to some “junk” antique shops with us. She was with us when we met Jeff and John at one shop in Cascade, IA. They sell their treasures to dealers in the area and invited us to their barn to shop the next day — so we did. We look forward to more shopping at their place.

Mom and Terry enjoyed some hugs, but not nearly enough time together!

We are back home now — arrived in time to see our grandkids in their Halloween costumes. McKenna was “Jasmine”, Brielle was a darling kitty cat, and Keegan was a GI Joe.

And it’s now November 1 — “count-down time to Thanksgiving and Christmas” as my friend, Betty, says.

We are visiting the Metzger’s and Ter’s mom in North Liberty, Iowa and enjoying much cooler temperatures here than in Austin! Since our good friends, Ann and Nick, were heading home in their RV from a long trip on the east coast, we suggested they stop by here to see us. They arrived a day after we did and are camping about 5 miles down the road from Jackie and Gregg’s house. We’ve watched the Texas vs. Texas Tech game on Pay for View here in Iowa, gone out for a big breakfast at a restaurant in the Amana Colonies, and shopped until we almost dropped at a nearby outlet mall. However, the biggest event of their stop here with us happened tonight after wonderful grilled pork steaks courtesy of Gregg. Nick made a big pot of fudge for us — 6 lbs. worth.

The batch filled 10 plastic one-half pound containers which we will enjoy later. But the best part was the fudge left in the pot — we each got a big spoon and almost made ourselves sick eating so much of the delicious warm fudge!

What amazes me is that Nick doesn’t eat fudge — how can he resist such a wonderful tasting treat, especially when it is warm, right out of the fudge pot!

Much has happened since last time I blogged here. Between September 17 and October 5, our Kelby was in two different hospitals. He is home now and has a big incision above and below his “belly button.” After three colonoscopies, 3 nuclear medicine tests, a capsule oscopy (a small camera that is swallowed and sends digital images to a receiver), and 2 endoscopies they found a Meckles problem in his small intestine causing rectal bleeding. The fix was removal of a small portion of the small intestine including the 8-inch Meckles. Meckles is a congenital problem for a few folks — and even then, it’s usually about 1-2 inches long — Kelby seems to always be the “exception.” After receiving 12 units of blood over the days before surgery and losing about 15 pounds, he’s on his way to good health again.

Our grandson celebrated his 11th birthday and our youngest grand daughter turned 6 last month! Where are some bricks that I can put on top of their heads to slow this down??? They just shake their heads and frown when I tell them this.

Of course we didn’t set up our booth spaces at the Warrenton/Round Top show this time. We did drive over two days ago to square up our reservations with every one. The new Cole’s Antiques building where we will have our booth space next spring is very nice! Because of the hurricanes, there were many empty spaces — but they have rented out every booth in that building and are planning another building to be finished and full by the spring show! Everyone we tried to settle up our accounts with were exceptionally nice and have rolled our due rents to the next show. So, we’ll be there . . . God willing . . . in March/April.

Sometimes we forget what is really important in our lives! We are so thankful that our Kelby is back on his feet and that we had so many wonderful friends and family praying for him.

Since coming “out of the pantry” re my love of Spam, I’ll confess today that I also think that “Ball Park” weiners (aka franks) make a fine paper plate lunch, too. They’re even more convenient than Spam — just rip one of the individually wrapped weiners off the pack of eight, put it in the microwave (leave it in its self-venting wrapper), and 25-30 seconds later, it’s done! Box says “Satisfaction Guaranteed.” The box also says “Ingredients: Beef and pork, mechanically separated turkey, water, corn syrup . . . .” Now, I’m wondering what exactly is in “mechanically separated turkey.” Oh well, if I’m not feeling very well in a couple of hours, I’ll let you know.

September appears to be a very popular birthday month — in addition to Betty’s birthday on the 10th, here is a BIG “Happy Birthday” to:
Eric Guentzel (belated greeting to him — he was ONE on Sept. 8 )
Carol Godwin (my long-time friend since grade school) — Sept. 11
“Dad” (Carl) Palmer — Sept. 12, 1920 – Jan. 11, 1998
Grandson Keegan — Sept. 16
“Daddy” (Gus) McCoy — Sept. 20, 1915 – July 1, 2002 (Still miss him so much!)
Nephew Justin Metzger — Sept. 23
Grand-daughter McKenna — Sept. 27

My good friend, Judy Mega, just missed the September month by a couple of days — belated birthday greetings to her on August 30. So glad that my two school buddies finally caught up with me — welcome to social security!

Probably shouldn’t do this, but it’s interesting to count backwards nine months to see what might have been going on to prompt these birth dates — and guess what — it would be December — Christmas — time to be “jolly.” When I count back for my birth date in June, it comes up September (my dad’s birthday month — hmmm). Interesting that Terry’s birthday is also in June and that his dad’s birthday month was also nine months before that — tee hee. Now, my children will do this and learn that our April anniversary is nine months before Kelby’s January birthday. Can’t explain Randal’s June birthday — except to say we were newlyweds (married 5 months in September) and probably not looking much at the calendar. Enough of this, I guess!

Tonight is STAN night — big problem, however ’cause Ann and Nick are gone. They took off in “Flyer” (their RV) and should be out of Texas by now. So, I’m going to cook tonight. Yes, “cook.” I’ll fix “rouladen” — a German dish; we picked up some rouladen (very thinly sliced steak) at a wonderful meat market in New Braunfels on our way home from a glass show in San Antonio last Saturday. We also bought some strip steaks, and Terry grilled those for us on Saturday night — excellent! They were enjoyed even more so as we watched our Texas Longhorns (rated #2) beat the Ohio State Buckeyes (rated #4) — a very exciting football game! Attendance at the Ohio stadium was over 100,000 and Texas fans were only allowed about 4,000 tickets — so, our little splashes of burnt orange hopefully made some big waves when the game ended! Way to go, Horns!