A Busy Week!

Hi, everyone!

A week ago Saturday, the town came for our leaf pile!  Grandma managed to rake up a few more leaves for the town to take before they finished the job. Then she picked up the eggs and orange juice and eggnog for the bake sale and took them and the frozen soup and gluten free scones over to church.  She had to make room in the church refrigerator and freezer for everything!  When she got back, she helped Grandpa rake more leaves.  The new pile is almost as big as the one the town had just taken away!  In the late afternoon Joe-san and Nancy-san came over with their truck to load all the bake sale supplies.  I helped get all the flour and sugar and pots and pans into Nancy-san’s truck, then we all had supper!   Daylight saving time ended that night, so we all got some extra sleep!

Joe-san and Nancy-san and Grandma took time after church on Sunday to get the church kitchen ready for baking.  On Monday, Grandma got up early to make three batches of chocolate bread dough.  She couldn’t wait to make it at church because it needed to rise before the chocolate bread shapers worked with it, and the shapers had to come early! A lot of my other bake sale friends came in the morning, too!

When some of the breads were shaped and ready to bake, Joe-san and Nancy-san arrived.  Nancy-san was in charge of rising and cooling, but Moose-san and Tilly forgot to come to help!  The first breads out of the oven were Swedish tea rings.  Grandma said one of them was a burnt offering, just because it didn’t stay joined at the seam.  Everybody enjoyed a piece!

It wasn’t very long before there were pans of bread rising in Nancy-san’s room and tea rings ready to go upstairs to the sale storage tables!  I made friends with this year’s scone kit makers and made sure they were measuring the biscuit mix just right!

Uncle Steven came to help bake, and after school he brought James and Thomas back to help.  When they took a break, I did too!  It was after my bedtime when Grandma took me upstairs to see all the bread we’d made.  There was a meeting going on at church, and people leaving the meeting stopped to buy things before the sale even started!

Because Grandma had already voted, she was able to get us back to church on Tuesday before the polls opened to start baking again.  I got to see my scone-making buddy Ann-san and my dough-making buddies Rod-san and John-san!

By lunchtime, John-san had made the very last batch of dough!  The coolers where the dough rises were starting to empty out, instead of filling up!  When Joe-san took the last pan of cinnamon rolls out of the oven, around 4 p.m., Grandma took me upstairs to see how much bread was left.  All the challahs and chocolate breads and cinnamon raisin breads and apples pies were completely gone!

Grandma had a Tuesday evening chorus rehearsal to get to, so Grandpa and I went back to church with her on Wednesday to bring home all the leftover ingredients and baking equipment.  After Wednesday choir rehearsal, Grandma cleaned and dried all the baking pans and stacked them to air out.  I made sure they were all ready to put away before they went back in their storage container!

On Thursday, it started snowing!  First the snow didn’t stick to anything, then it started sticking on the picnic table.  Then it started sticking on the deck and the grass!  It stayed cold overnight, so the snow stayed around and the impatiens plant in the basket froze!

On Friday, the sun came out, but it was still cold!  All the leaves on our neighbor’s tree dropped off in a big yellow circle on the snow!

Friday afternoon, Grandma and Grandpa went over to Uncle Steven’s house to meet the school bus.  Uncle Steven and Aunt Kara went away for the weekend, so James and Thomas stayed with us!  James brought not-quite-Lion-san along for the weekend! On Saturday, Thomas and I helped Grandma make an AWACS cheesecake and James and Grandpa played Monopoly.  Grandpa’s set is very old and the prices for everything are much lower than on James’ set at his house!  James did some sudoku puzzles and didn’t need anybody’s help, even for the very hard ones!    Grandma and Grandpa took James and Thomas to the Strong Museum, but non-quite-Lion-san and I decided to stay home.  On Sunday, Thomas had five slices of gummy cinnamon toast for breakfast!

Uncle Steven and Aunt Kara came back Sunday afternoon.  After dinner on Sunday, James and Thomas went home with them.  Today, we have a winter storm warning.  It’s been snowing all day, and we’re supposed to have up to ten inches of snow by tomorrow morning.  It’s a good day to hibernate!

Love,

Lion-san