Family day

While our autumn - er, summer - seemed to last f-o-r-e-v-e-r around here, I think we've finally seen the end of our 80 and 90 degree days. Sunday morning I awoke to ice - yes, ice, on my windshield. I've lived in southern California for 9 years and not once have I had ice on my windshield! It was actually kind of a pleasant treat.

Yes, I understand that for all of you who live in normal parts of the world where there are truly 4 seasons, you think I am crazy - especially my sister Karen, who is currently on day, um, 6, I believe, of no power, no heat, and no running water, thanks to the ice storm in New Hampshire. (I am writing this on Tuesday - don't believe Blogger when it tells you I posted this on Monday! Darn Blogger - I email the photos from Picasa to Blogger, and they sit there as a "draft" waiting for me to write something and post them, but then Blogger dates the post whenever I sent the photos, not when I actually write the post. Grr...) Anyway...apparently, according to my sister, there are some people who are not going to have electricity even by Christmas!! I cannot even imagine....

Back to our fun cool weather here. It was in the 20's here on Sunday morning! Awesome! In the afternoon, we drove up to Oak Glen, which is at about 5000 feet and about 25 minutes from us, in the hopes of seeing some snow. We met our friends, Dan and Gloria, up there. There were only small bits of snow left by then, but we did see some fun ice in the apple orchards. I think the sprinklers must have been left on or something - I've never seen anything like it. The ice on the ground was so incredible.

We enjoyed some hot cocoa, hot apple cider, and coffee, with apple pie and ice cream in the little restaurant there at the orchard. Yum! They had a nice wood-burning stove going, so we were able to warm up inside.

We missed the real snow, because yesterday it POURED rain all day here, so I'm sure it left plenty of snow up in Oak Glen for them!

I just, this afternoon, figured out how to work our gas fireplace. I was thrilled to find out that the pilot was already lit and that there is a wall switch hiding behind the television set in the family room! I need to vacuum out the cobwebs and dead bugs before I can really use it, but I'll be taking care of that this afternoon so we can enjoy a fire tonight! There are lots of cold, rainy days forecast in the next week or two here, so I'm sure we'll be getting a lot of use out of the fireplace. That makes mama happy!