It's becoming a tradition...

Every other year we travel to one of my favorite places on this planet - Nashville, TN, and it's surrounding areas. I spent 4 years of my life there going to nursing school, made some of my best friends and experienced the awesome privilege of being "adopted" into this incredible family called the Simmons.

This year was an off year, one where Nick and I stay at home and invariably I end up working or being on-call and where we have started our own tradition of completing a home project. We realized that the last 2 times we've stayed home it's involved completing a home project. Two years ago it was the living/family rooms, which nearly ended in disaster if we wouldn't have had some awesome friends to help us put everything back together and cook dinner (so miss the Sormins and their being our project slaves!! =)). This year we ordered cabinets from Paul Franklin at Just Inside the Door Custom Woodcrafts and after much discussion and talking decided that rather than install beautiful cabinets and THEN do the pantry remodel, we'd do the remodel THEN install the cabinets. We've been working on it for about a week, technically 4 days solidly and it is all finished in time for new cabinets. It seems that with each project we take on some piece that we've never done before - this time it involved making and hanging our own exterior door. All I have to say to this is, "attempt once and next time buy a pre-made". The project is done though and if I do say so myself, it looks FAB-u-LOUS!! The cabinets will be here the second week in December and I cannot wait to remove my pantry from our dining room and kitchen and put stuff where it belongs - in beautiful, white cabinets with loads of storage space!! And it's done!! We pounded in the last nail, spackled the last hole and cut the last piece of board at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday night; today we finished the caulking, painting the spackle spots and the repair spots on the door. Pictures with the cabinets in will come soon!

We of course celebrated Thanksgiving by eating way too much food and tried a bunch of new gourmet recipes this year. Dinner consisted of: chantrelle and apricot stuffing, pear shallot gravy, mashed potatoes with Gruyere and caramelized leeks, squash casserole (thanks Mom Sandy for this delish recipe!), port and cinnamon cranberry sauce with homemade whipping cream, romanesco, sourdough rolls, pumpkin cheesecake and Cline Viognier wine. Absolute deliciousness!!

Leaf Shuffling and Apple Squashing

Two weekends in summary:
Nick and I enjoyed the last day at the farmer's market on October 30th and on a whim decided to drive up to Leavenworth to check out the fall colors. The leaves were gorgeous and we stopped along the river to take some pictures. In Leavenworth we walked around and ate lunch, bought a camera (our battery died at our first stop), took Jack for a walk down by the river, bought some chocolates and headed home. We also found handfuls of chestnuts to try roasting. We celebrated Halloween by passing out candy and watching our traditional Halloween movies of Corpse Bride and Young Frankenstein. The garden is officially tucked in with mesh on top of the boxes and burlap over the roses and herbs. I also planted some seeds of lettuce and cherry tomatoes to see if we can grow summer through the winter.

On Friday, November 5th, we headed for Walla Walla for canning applesauce with my mom. Over the weekend we celebrated my mom's birthday, ate a pre-Thanksgiving dinner with Nick's family and then the big event of canning on Sunday. We started at about 7:15 in the morning getting things set-up, cleaned and ready to go. The first apples started being cut at about 8 a.m. and we just went through batch after batch. I used 3 varieties of apples - jonagolds, galas and honey crisp; the goal was to use the least amount of sugar possible and I was successful at that and only used about a cup of sugar per batch. I ended up with 34 quarts for Nick and I for this winter/next year - about 9 quarts more than I planned for! Overall our stats were: 238 pounds of apples, 7 different varities, 14.25 hours, one trash bag full of apple pulp, 134 quarts of applesauce and 4 very tired ladies. We lifted the last jar out of the canner at 9:30 Sunday night. On top of that my mom made 8 loaves of homemade bread of which we indulged in while still hot and slathered in butter.

Ode to night shift

They come to work as the sun sets and
Go home as the sun rises.
During the winter months they hardly see the light of day.

They work in the dark or very dim lit room,
They walk softly and whisper their care,
Quietly telling you what they are doing and yet
Allowing rest and recovery to occur.

They wipe fevered brows, empty drains, watch telemetry monitors,
Listen to restful breathing or restless stirs.
They bring cots for family members
And offer reassurances.

They bring midnight snacks and pain pills.
They watch, wait and comfort through those tragic moments.
They sit at the bedsides of the dying and pray.

These are the nurses of the night shift.
The ones that keep vigil while others sleep
And dream...

They work in the dark and provide such light.