Saturday at Home

It's the first Saturday at home alone for us in several weeks, and we've enjoyed it. A typical low-key day, but it's nice to have one of those, at least every so often. It's the last one for awhile. Next Saturday our good friends Byron and Katie Cartwright will be with us, and we'll be having fun together. The next Saturday I'm at the Stone-Campbell Dialogue in Dallas, Texas (and Jennifer will be here between trips enjoying herself with Evelyn). The next Saturday is the Missionary Convention, I mean ICOM, and after that Thanksgiving!
So . . . a weekend at home was definitely in order.
We ate breakfast out this morning, which we almost never do on a Saturday. It started like this: Evelyn was going to bake some cinnamon biscuits for us, but then she realized she was out of butter. And then she remembered she had credit for two "sweets" (cookie or muffin or cinnamon roll, etc) on her Panera frequent buyer card. "Want to go over there for breakfast?" "Sure, let's have an adventure." (You know  you're old when a trip to Panera is an adventure!)
Well, I drove in the direction of the Panera at Union Centre Blvd.; I'm not sure why, because the Panera at Voice of America is certainly closer. But when we got over there, I said, "Hey, we haven't been to Original Pancake House in quite awhile."
"Drive by and see if there's a line."
There wasn't--at 8:45 when we showed up. So we figured we can use the Panera card another time, and we indulged ourselves in their wonderful almond cinnamon French toast, which I can't remember ever seeing on anyone else's menu.
We came home and Skyped with Wendy Wagoner while I cut up apples for applesauce and Evelyn did a few other tasks, all while we kept up the conversation with Wendy.
I spent more time than was probably necessary finishing preparations for my Sunday school lesson tomorrow ("Attractional Vs. Missional") and practicing music to play during Communion in the blended service.
We grabbed some lunch (I made a salad with the first of the fall lettuce patch growing on the deck, and sliced one of the last tomatoes from our garden), I finished my Sunday-morning preparations, and then I went to the grocery store. (Stocked up on candy and apple cider for Halloween Wednesday night.)
By that time it was almost 6:00. I read in the book I'm supposed to finish for the Dallas retreat while Evelyn took her walk, and then took a shower after Evelyn while she fixed supper.
We watched the Weather Channel while we ate supper. This is not a sign of our dotage but of our concern for Hurricane Sandy, which is forecasted to come ashore with damaging winds and rain squarely between the Johnsons in Philly and the Taylors in New York. The height of the storm is supposed to be Monday night. Evelyn texted the kids today, and Geoff said they were stocking up on gallons of water and canned goods. I think it's going to be a challenging week for our East Coast kin.

We had grilled pork chops and StoveTop stuffing for
supper to go with the applesauce we made in the Crock Pot today.
The apples came from NorthCarolina.