For Halloween tonight, we had the missionaries over for chili and hot dogs and a pumpkin torte for dessert. Sarah wanted to carve a pumpkin in honor of the day and below is her masterpiece. (she photographed this resting on the glass outdoor table - nice effect)

Happy Halloween to you all!

And, another month has whizzed by! Seems like I was just buying groceries for October….

Sarah is home from New Hampshire. She took a rather meandering trip back – stopping to sleep her first night (Friday) at the home of one of her Bear Brook buddies who lives in Rochester, N.Y. She stayed Saturday night with Elise in Carmel and Sunday night with Julina in Lafayette. Monday night it was with Emily in St. Louis and FINALLY we saw her on Tuesday morning. Only, I was not home when she arrived, darn it. I was down on the MU campus being a rice tester. Yea, you heard me. Me and tons of other people (mostly Asian – go figure) were part of a taste-test group to determine which type of rice grown by the MU ag department was the best. Only, all five samples tasted exactly the same to me. They looked, smelled, and tasted like rice. I was no help to them at all. I hope the Asians were more discerning. However, for my time and troubles, I took home a MU mug, a silicone trivet, and about 20 pounds of free rice (so I can come to the same conclusion at home, I’m sure).

Things were so busy Tuesday that neither Steve nor I got to visit much with Sarah but we made up for it the next day when took Sarah (and Sadie) with us while we drove all the way up to Nauvoo and back to attend an endowment session and a marriage sealing for some ward members. The time with Sarah was perfect, the temple was marvelous (of course), and the weather was sunny but WINDY – oh my, it was terrible. Sarah said that one time, as she was walking around town, a gust knocked Sadie over! This was the same horrible wind that did so much damage to the upper mid-west area.

My BIG things this past week was the one-hour presentation I had to give at Thursday night’s Stake Auxiliary Training and my studio recital yesterday afternoon. For the training, I was to teach teaching to the Education counselors. No pressure there. But, we turned out to have a great discussion and I hopefully modeled all the points I was trying to make. My recital was the smallest and shortest one I have had in years – five students playing six numbers! We were in and out in 30 minutes.

Steve and I went to a middle-school theatrical production last night – one of my piano students was in it. We both wore our Peanuts Great Pumpkin t-shirts and felt like nerdy grandparents in the audience. Do any of you remember the half-completed model WWII bomber that Steve started with his dad years ago, and resumed once with Steven? Well, it is now finally finished. It took two date-nights to do it and don’t look too closely because there are plenty of flaws (model airplane instructions are ridiculously confusing) but now we can hang it from the ceiling down in the family room next to the framed recognition certificates for Steve’s Uncle Billy who died in World War II. Check one more project off the to-do list.

Sadie has a new doo

Doesn't she look fine?

Noah was here last week! Emily had a photo session in Sedalia Tuesday afternoon so she drove to our house, left Noah in the hands of me and Beckie (when I was teaching) and continued on her way. She got home late enough that they stayed overnight and left Wednesday morning. I got these cute photos of Noah playing with Grandpa’s trains before they left.

Christmas and birthday came early to me last week. I received an Amazon gift certificate from a family of a former cello student in my e-mail in-box for – get this - $100.00! Guess what I have already spent most of it on???? Yep, several DVD adaptations of Jane Austin books. I now have the BBC version of Sense and Sensibility, two versions of Emma, and the BBC Persuasion. Oooo, I am so excited.

Steve and I went to the St. Louis temple Friday evening. We went early so he could be set apart and be trained as a veil worker. Then, we joined the rest of the stake presidency and the high council for the 7:30 session. Afterward, we enjoyed light refreshments in the temple cafeteria while listening to the first temple president tell some of the miraculous stories of how the St. Louis temple came to be. It was a great (and late) day.

Saturday we drove up to Moberly and then west about fifteen miles to a pecan orchard that also happens to raise buffalo and sells the meat. So, in addition to buying six pounds of pecans (nuts - my favorite food!), we also bought two pounds of ground buffalo. Gonna have buffalo burgers next month….mmm, mmm, mmm!

Civic Orchestra had their first concert of the season on Sunday night. We played the Outdoor Overture by Copland, the Vaughn Williams oboe concerto, and Beethoven’s 6^th Symphony. Lots of difficult music but I think we performed them all very well. I never tire of playing Beethoven and the Pastoral Symphony is just so joyful. The Civic Orchestra just gets better and better and it is a real shame that so few people attend our concerts. It fell at the end of MU’s super-celebratory homecoming weekend so I suppose that might have affected the numbers in the audience. Only Beckie was able to attend from the family. Steve had home teaching (and he has so few evenings open to fulfill that duty that I completely understood). Steven had a shortened nap due to his stake public affairs meeting in the afternoon so he needed to sleep. Oh well, maybe next concert when we play Hans Zimmer The Dark Knight!!!!!

Here you go, Elise......

Come Little Leaves
by George Cooper

"Come little leaves," said the wind one day.
"Come over the meadows with me and play;
Put on your dresses of red and gold,
For summer is gone and the days grow cold."

Soon as the leaves heard the wind's loud call,
Down they came fluttering, one and all;
Over the brown fields they danced and flew,
Singing the sweet little songs they knew.

"Cricket, good-by, we've been friends so long,
Little brook, sing us your farewell song;
Say you are sorry to see us go;
Al, you will miss us, right well we know."

Dancing and whirling, the little leaves went,
Winter had calle3d them and they were content;
Soon, fast asleep in their earthy beds,
The snow laid a coverlid over their heads.

You know it must be autumn when…..

The monarchs start migrating through. Look what I found on my zinnia the other afternoon. And, it stayed still long enough for me to snap a few pictures.

The Renaissance Festival is back. Thanks to free tickets won by listening to KBIA, I returned to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival after about a ten year boycott. It’s just that the last time I went, it was rainy and the day was so miserable and the ticket prices are so high that I just couldn’t get excited about going again. So, as other family members gleefully went year after year, I happily stayed home. However, free tickets and a free weekend and the chance to parade Sadie around was too tempting so I returned with Steve, Beckie, Steven, Tamara, Jason Bell, and Melanie Johnsen on Saturday. We had a great time and this was Tamara, Jason, and Melanie’s first experience with the Renaissance Festival. The weather was perfect in the shade – a bit warm in the sun but thankfully there was a breeze. The shops, the events, and the scenes at the festival were all the same. I saw someone carrying around a wax hand (really, they still do those?) We savored delicious cinnamon almonds and admired the yummy turkey legs (but no one bought one). We even found our Sarah in one of the shops. Seriously – take a look!

She attended last year and I guess the shop owner took her photo. We attended the Dr. Dumpe show and it was as entertaining as ever. While Steve and I walked out to the car to retrieve our lunches, the others watched the jousting tournament. We also went to the hypnotist show and the Steves were hypnotized just while sitting in the audience! We saw ALL kinds of characters in (and out) of Renaissance costumes attending the festival. And, everyone LOVED Sadie and Max.

I made royal capes and Beckie fashioned royal headpieces for them to wear – which they did for about 40 seconds.

That is also about how long they actually walked, too. Most of the time, they were carried around in purses and backpacks.

Both were very well behaved and both just collapsed in a sleeping heap during the drive home, they were so tuckered out.

It is vet time. Alfred was due for his yearly check-up and rabies shot so I loaded him up in the pet carrier Wednesday morning and he yowled at me all the way there. He is healthy as ever and he now weighs 17.2 pounds!!!! What a lunk.

Not much else to write about this week. Most of you readers already know of Sarah’s big news – that she will come home the end of this week for just two months because she returns to New England to be the Environmental Educator at the Merryspring Nature Center in Camden, Maine from January to mid-November. Both Steve and I are excited about this opportunity for growth, both in her career and personally. The church she will attend is a branch. In fact, the stake she will be in, the Bangor Maine Stake, has twelve units and most are branches – only five wards. So, I know the Rockland Branch will be very happy to have Sarah join their ranks for almost eleven months if only for the fact that she can play the hymns and lead the singing in a functional beat pattern!

Notice I did not say much about the changing leaves. That is because our color this year has so far been very subtle. Supposedly due to the lack of rain. Our backyard maple has only one branch that has turned red. I guess the rest of leaves didn't get the memo.......

the barkeologists

You should hear Trissy and Sadie right now. They are in the back yard barking themselves hoarse. Probably the neighbor cat. I love how Sadie feels like such a big dog when she is with Trissy. She now joins us on our morning walks with Trissy. She can usually last at least 3/4 of the time on her own four paws. But, eventually, at some time during the thirty-minutes, she has to be carried by me. Ridiculous.....

Monday, October 11, 2010

Well, I have finally joined the 21^st century and started a blog. This will take the place of my family news- letter that I have been e-mailing to everyone. My reasons for a blog are these:

1. I can post photos that will be easier to view for the reader

2. Readers can catch up on Lambson news when they feel like it. I realize that there may be times when reading about our nuts life is just a bit too much.

SO, what have we been doing these past three weeks? Enjoying beautiful autumn weather for one. Although this past week, we have had a spell of Indian summer (or should that be Native-American summer???) Our air conditioner is back on, darn it! But, before last week, it was so chilly some mornings that picking beans was downright miserable because the damp leaves were so cold. With the shorter, cooler days, the beans slowed down a bit but, after last week, they are in full production mode again. I am including a picture of these crazy bean plants. I have liked the pole beans this year because I don’t have to bend down so much to pick and the taller vines keep the beans out of the lawn-clipping mulch I put on the ground for weed control. Nothing is more tedious than cleaning each individual bean of bits of grass before cooking. But, pole beans tend to be more stringy and, finding them amid the leaves and vines is ridiculously difficult. So, next year, I have found some pole bean seeds that are not only string-less but they are purple!!! How great is that?

The week that ended on the 25th of September, I was pretty involved with the stake Relief Society humanitarian project afternoon/dinner/and General Relief Society broadcast. I am happy to report that it was well attended and most of the projects were completed (toy bags, school bags, lap quilts, greeting card packets for soldiers to send to family and friends back home) and the on-going projects (baby hats and coloring quilt squares) moved forward quite a bit. The meal was delicious (rotisserie chicken, herb potatoes, green salad (ordered too much), rolls and fruit cobblers (ordered too little) and the broadcast was fantastic, of course. We had media coverage from two television stations and one newspaper (thanks in part to Steven, Jr. who has connections and is on the stake public affairs committee). Here are some of the sisters making baby hats.....

General Conference weekend was wonderful. We watched it on our computer - typically is not a very comfortable venue. But, we shuffled furniture around and put the dinner table in the living room and moved the two-seater love seat and two upholstered single chairs into the dining room and we had a very nice little set-up.

This past weekend we enjoyed the company of Emily, Joe, and Noah. They arrived Friday night on the Amtrak so Noah could enjoy a real train ride. Noah LOVES trains. The whole time he is here, he wants to go downstairs to play with grandpa Steve’s train set. Steve and I drove down to Jefferson City to pick them up where we also ate a picnic supper in the shadow of the state capital building. We then met Beckie at Schryocks Corn Maze and had a great time with our flashlights wandering around the stalks of corn. Saturday was to be another fun event with the Hartsburg Pumpkin Festival but after spending over an hour and a half in our vehicles just trying to get to a place to park (at times, they actually routed the cars through the festival itself, where we were forced to compete for narrow road space with hoards of people, all of whom moved faster on foot than anyone did by car! We were finally directed to park in a corrugated and dusty corn field), we were so frustrated that we had no desire to attend any longer. So, we got back into our vehicles and left. Sad. But, everyone made up for that debacle by going to Harrisburg (opposite direction) to Lonnie Ray’s BBQ for dinner. It is in a little hole in the wall, can only hold about twenty customers, food is served on Styrofoam plates with plastic dinner ware. But, the food is incredible. I didn’t get to go because the latter part of my Saturday was spent going to Cole Camp (about an hour and forty minutes southwest of Columbia) to play quartet music for a Prairie Day event. We literally played on a prairie. It was on a higher elevation so one could look south for miles and miles. We played under a striped tent to a very appreciative audience (most bird watchers and conservationists tend to be a little more educated and cultured) and had a great time. I was gone over six hours but I came home to Lonnie Ray left-overs so I was happy. Mmmmm, ribs are my favorite.

Now it is a new work week. I have a lot of computer work to do – with photos, with a presentation for auxiliary training in two weeks. Until next time…..