Birthday weekend!

And fall break, which almost always falls on the weekend closest to my birthday, so I get a spiffy three-day-weekend out of the deal!

Friday, we spent the morning at home, while J made bread, and I read my book. Ahhhh... Then we rode horses, and headed out to visit a bunch of farm stands. Picked up some butternut squash, since our CSA didn't deliver any this year, and neither did our garden. Drat. Also got pumpkins for the front porch! J made me Thai curry. Mmmmm... curry.

Saturday, we had dressage lessons with a new person, as it seems that our dressage club is about to fall apart due to lack of facilities. (I told them and told them that if they just kept coming to Horseplay all summer, our barn owner would let them keep coming. But if they only wanted to show up once in a while when the weather was bad, it wouldn't be worth his paying the insurance. So now they are without a place to ride. Sigh. But! There's a new person around who's very good, so I can do what I do... otherwise I'd be furious.) Then we went and picked up some arena mirrors that we bought second-hand. It was a fun little afternoon of problem solving. How do you get the mirrors off the glued on plywood without breaking them?! We did it, and now have to figure out the reverse problem---how do you put mirrors with glue on the back onto new plywood and still have them absolutely flat?

Today, we stayed at the house all day (well, it's still only 2 pm!). We put the garden to bed, did laundry, ground wheat, played with a recipe for whole-wheat crackers, got some more canning done (apple juice, vegetable broth, picallili---hooray for the pressure canner!), made mozzarella cheese for our pizza tonight, read books, and played with the dogs. J made peach cobbler for my office birthday party---all our friends don't EVEN know how happy they will be tomorrow! The peach pie filling I canned a month ago made it absurdly easy. J kept trying to make it more difficult.

Helicopters overhead mean John S. and co. are pulling someone off the mountain. We are having a much better day than them! I'm sure we'll hear all about it tomorrow.

The hens are molting, and off the lay. We haven't had any eggs for two weeks! Sheesh, ladies, get a move on!

And we still have the Sunday NYT and local paper to go! What a nice birthday weekend I'm having...