Gram's Place

We have a downtown trick-or-treat night tomorrow night. It's a night that all the businesses downtown hand out candy to all the little kitty cats and jedi knights. loads of candy. I talked about it two years ago here . I made a huge mistake that year and opened the candy early. some mistakes, I have learned, you make over and over again. and you never really learn. I bought 30 pounds of candy for tomorrow night. I have 27 left.

Okay, so it isn't Monday. what. ev. er. Monday - Easy Does It Spaghetti, Salad, Garlic Bread Tuesday - Almond Rice Chicken, Peas Wednesday - Eat at Youth Building Thursday - Beef Cubed Steak, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy, Broccoli Friday - Sliced Top Sirloin with Chili Beans, Apple Cole Slaw, Cornbread Saturday - Black Beans and Rice, Buttery Corn So, here's the deal. We have been trying to do some things to simplify our lives lately. So, we tried the "revolving menu" where we would have the same thing each week ... uh... bor. ing. This week, we decided to try this. For $5 a week (only $4 a week with Shawn's handy dandy coupon code) we get a weekly menu, and a complete, ready to shop grocery list with the prices and everything at one of our local grocery stores. I figured out the meals I shopped for - 5 of them in all - was $47 in groceries this week (plus a few staples I had on hand of course). Each meal serves 6 people... so it averages at about $1.56 per pl

I'm home! I thought I'd have so much time to blog when I was visiting Mom, and I did have time..but no internet access. I guess I didn't realize how wireless home is! Anyway, I'm back. And mom is doing much better than before. She is recovering slowly, but steadily. She has a little time ahead of her to heal, but it's going well so far. She has one more month off work, so she should be in good shape by November! Yay! Shawn and I both went to the school and had lunch with Emily yesterday. It was super fun! Shawn charmed the 3rd grade girls and they called him a "show off", which he was by the way. ;) And I met the most captivating 1st grader. He was a very enthusiatic charmer with the most contagious smile I have ever seen. When he smiled, his entire face lit up. But the best part about him was his conversation. This boy spent the entire lunch hour bragging about the special girl in his life -- his mom. "My mom cooks the most amazing suppers

Thought I'd post an update. I'm still here in AZ helping mom. She is doing better and better each day. My sister left and went back to Washington so now it's just me and mom and her husband. We went to the doctor today and he said she's doing better. We have two more appts this week and I'm anticipating she'll be good enough to say goodbye to me at the airport in a few days. Meanwhile, I'm cooking and freezing food so she doesn't have to do prepare meals for a while, and getting caught up on a few things they need to get done before winter here. *COUGH* as bad as winter gets in AZ. Nothing like the midwest let me tell you. Why, it might even get down to 40 here! And I don't mean below zero. I went to church here on Sunday. Lifechurch.tv to be exact. It was pretty good. A small church - the service I went to was about 70 people maybe. I was worried at first because at 9:30 exactly when the worship team began to worship, there were only abou