Dominos?

It was sort of a lazy day today. I did take our bedspread over to Daughter Dawn's to use her washer and dryer to wash it. It's just too big for my little Splendide washer to handle. But other than that I really didn't do much beside read.

This afternoon after she got home from school, I rode with Granddaughter Havela to Salem where she had an appointment. Havela's driver's license is just a couple of weeks old and it's fun riding with her and seeing what a careful driver she is. It's hard to believe that she is actually old enough to drive and even harder to realize that she will be graduating from Canby High School this coming Spring!

I fixed a couple of the acorn squashes (they were all volunteers...) from Dawn's garden with butter, brown sugar and honey for supper this evening while Todd barbecued spare ribs. The kids aren't really old enough to enjoy squash, but the adults feasted.

Dawn has barred Todd from playing Hand and Foot, our usual card game when we get together, so we had to find something else tonight. After debating Risk, Clue or the Farming Game, we settled on a game of Mexican Train Dominoes. There are so many variations of the rules which led to some intense discussions at times. It was a very loud and noisy evening.

Peaches!

As I predicted yesterday, we spent a good share of today dealing with absolutely luscious peaches. We started off this morning with Dutch Babies (a baked fluffy pancake) covered in sliced fresh peaches -- they were so sweet, they didn't even need sugar.

Then it was on to jam making. We made several batches to put in Daughter Mary Mae's freezer (and a couple of little ones to take home for ours...).

We ended up giving Sister Sherry a call in the afternoon to check on how she prepared her frozen peach pies. I thought I remembered that she mixed the sugar and tapioca and spices with the sliced peaches and then froze the pie filling in freezer bags in a pie plate. She then took the bags out and stacked them in the freezer. That way the frozen filling would be the right shape ready to slip into pastry and baked. Sherry confirmed that my memory was correct, so I went ahead and made enough for three pies. We had enough ripe peaches left to make a pie for supper as well.

The rest of the peaches will be sliced and frozen for smoothies, but they need to ripen another day or so. I guess that will be our Monday's task.

After supper, Mary Mae decided it was time to indoctrinate our grandchildren into our favorite card game of Hand and Foot. I was surprised how quickly both of them caught on. Grandson Varick partnered with Grandpa and the two of them turned out to be a deadly combination. Granddaughter Claire and I and the parents will have to wait for retribution on another night!

Resting Up

We have passes for one more day to visit the last park on Leslie's Disney World tour. She's warned us it's going to be a busy day tomorrow, so we spent most of today just resting up...

It cooled off enough by late afternoon that I could sit outside with my Kindle and read. Towards evening Bill and Leslie came over. We topped the chunk of Brie we had gotten a couple of weeks ago at Costco with some pecan halves, then wrapped it in Pillsbury's refrigerator roll dough and baked it. When it was nicely browned and all gooey inside, we divvied it up and ate it with pear and apple slices, blackberries and grapes. (Leslie tried it with a slice of cucumber, but decided that wasn't a keeper...)

We had a rematch of last night's Hand and Foot game. It was close, but Leslie and I got our revenge and beat the fellows by some three hundred points!

Hand and Foot

Since it was 2:30 AM this morning by the time we got home from Disney's Magic Kingdom and I got my blog posted, we did not get up very early this morning. (Not that we often get up early, but this was even later than usual for us...) We didn't accomplish very much after we go up either. After all, we are retired, you know.

Late this afternoon we made a quick trip over to the nearby Publix grocery to pick up milk and orange juice and restock my blueberry supply. Leslie and Bill were bringing over her shrimp and avocado salad for supper. It was a very hot day today, so I decided to make Grandma Hardt's pear salad as well. It's a true 1950's salad: canned Bartlett pear halves on a lettuce bed with a dab of Miracle Whip in the center, topped with shredded Colby cheese and chopped pecans. I haven't tasted that combination for over thirty years, but it was actually pretty good and every bit of both salads disappeared.

After dinner we decided that it was about time we had a rematch of Hand and Foot. Leslie and I had soundly beaten the fellows the last time we played and they were out for revenge.

Things got pretty heated there for a while --

I was getting frustrated as I had this handful of cards with not enough meld to get down on the board!
(I'm ten points short of the 180 I need...)

It didn't get a whole lot better and the fellows definitely won this round! Oh well, tomorrow is another day...