our journeys: Catching Up September

Chadwick has a cousin that lives in town with his wife and family. They enjoy a good party more than anyone I know....games, food, creativeness, get-to-gethers...the Austin's are all about it. They host a Christmas party every year for friends within the ward boundaries and it's gotten so large that couples who have moved out of the ward boundaries are cut off from the 50+ guest list. I can't imagine trying to set up an event for that many people each year. On my own. At any rate, one of Nathan's new loves is the Escape Room experience. Several of these have popped up around Meridian (maybe nationally?) and it entails a group of people sitting in a room together with a list of clues to find more clues to get to an end point. Sometimes it's saving the world, or rescuing a small child. There's always a theme. Nathan and his wife came up with their own version to be completed within the walls of their home. Chadwick, myself, Stephen, and Tara were invited over without the kiddos to "test" the latest version of Nathan's Escape Room, and while I had reservations prior to the event, turns out it was a blast. We had a set of clues handed to us to start the chain of events, and our goal was to obtain the code to a 1970s era briefcase and retrieve the contents therein. The creativity and time put into coordinating the clues was impressive....took us a solid hour to work through the puzzles, toy bins, sign language sentence, black light message, and scripture clues to lead us to the final combo. I mean, they found an old book with an appropriate title and carved a chunk out so that it could contain a set of keys! I felt like I was in a movie....a home-made mystery.

Nathan had most of the kinks worked out from his previous attempt and had to give us very few hints. We were powered by ice cream and cake when things got tough.

The final treasure were three bags of candy - cinnamon bears being the only one I remember. He could make this a business on the side and I would gladly participate again.

The Red Cross has been hounding me for months to donate blood, and while I appreciate the need for blood products, I do not appreciate the process to be endured to obtain the final product. I can draw blood from multiple veins on multiple species, but when the 18-gauge needle is heading toward my own arm, I start to sweat and go into overdrive with the talking. Powering through the distress, it was a good donation and I'm always glad to walk out with the red band around my arm.

Then there's the den. I cannot break Spencer of the habit of throwing off the couch pillows when he's in here watching a movie. The start of the movie has him sitting on a well-put together couch. By the end, the pillows are a mess and he's sitting on top of the pile like he's king of the mountain. Drives me crazy. The other afternoon, he dumped the pillows and then proceeded to take the movies down from the shelf and carefully organize them on the floor.

And for some reason I loved the sight of these little tennis shoes sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor after the kids had gone to bed. There will never be tiny shoes like this again in the near future.

Our apple tree didn't impress this year (neither did the peach tree or the grapes, for that matter) so I loaded the kids into the car and drove past my old veterinary clinic on the boulevard toward a Church owned orchard for some apples. Two u-turns and 35 minutes later, we found ourselves facing a large bin of Jonathon apples. The kids gleefully piled apples into boxes and I was shocked to learn that we hit 90 pounds of apples with one box to go....I gave that last box to another family and loaded our loot into the car. One apple crisp and 33 quarts of applesauce later - leaves me with fewer pounds than what I started. Thanks to Tara for helping me sauce most of our pick!