Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

hiking

Short and sweet September: a monthly round-up

The month itself was not short but this review of our month will be because it seems like we hunkered down and got into routines and didn’t do a whole lot of extra stuff. It was the first full month of school and sports and all that those activities entail. Not every month has to be exciting. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. I’m hoping for some slower days with more meaningful activities sprinkled in. We’ll see what October brings.

What We Did

The kids and Phil helped friends move then went to a deck party with some of our church friends. I was home sick with not-Covid.

Later that same weekend we took our friend David on a shopping spree for his new apartment, thanks to some generous gifts from friends.

David with his haul for his new home

My book club friends came over to hang out on the porch so we could plan our getaway weekend (you’ll have to wait for October’s round-up to hear about that).

We attended a bunch of away football games in support of the band (and because our son is really into football right now). Phil and our son went to the Homecoming game while I was on my weekend getaway.

Friday night lights in Lancaster County
Our son and his friend group cheering on the Bucks
The only non-blurry picture of the marching band I have because I’m so into the show!

Soccer. Our son is playing; Phil is coaching. These are our Saturdays.

Our son is the one on the ground

I went to an open house at the high school and met our daughter’s teachers, who all had nice things to say about her, which made my heart full to bursting.

The band hosted a show for other area bands and I worked an 8-hour shift in the concession stand, which was actually kind of fun.

Our last “summer” hike with church friends was at Speedwell Forge. We had a large group and lots of fun conversations.

I Preached. Again. I know. It’s becoming a bit of a thing. Click here if you want to have a watch/listen.

And I participated in the Munro Step Challenge, a fundraiser for Blood Cancer UK one of My Peak Challenge’s charity partners. During the entire month of September, I logged 312,607 steps. Wowza.

What We Ate 

I opted for a new meal planning method for the school year because I’m tired of eating all the same things and running to the store so often. So, a couple of times a month I pick a bunch of cookbooks off our shelves, page through them and write down every recipe that sounds good. Then I go to the Google doc that holds our weekly meal plans and I start slotting recipes. I note where the recipe is found and what ingredients we need, which then get transferred to the Google doc shopping list. We’ve eaten a variety of good stuff, none of which I remember to take a picture of because we’re always shoveling our dinners down before or in-between activities.

One that I did remember to photograph was baked eggs in collard greens.

We ate out a few times:

Jersey Mike’s with our friend David.

French fries from Nice Size Fries and ice cream from Lickety Split at one of the away football games.

Five Guys, before one of the football games.

I went to Guacamole Specialist with a friend and had this amazing guacamole bowl.

And soup! Of course. Phil dumped a bunch of leftovers in a pot and seasons them to perfection, and it tasted amazing. Fall is soup season and I love everything about it.

What We Watched

Grace and Frankie. I finally watched the last episode, and it was a good ending to the journey.

Press Your Luck and Richard Osman’s House of Games. Sometimes a good game show is all you need.

Arrested Development. The Bluths are my antidote to despair.

Grantchester. Always up for some murder-solving in England.

Thor: Love and Thunder. I liked it more than some members of my family did.

I’m rewatching Outlander when I can and because I can.

On Labor Day weekend, we stayed home and had a movie marathon of the following movies:

Ghostbusters (the 2016 reboot) Loved it. Funny. The cameos were great.

The Prom (a Netflix movie based on a musical about some washed-up Broadway actors who head to a small Indiana town to help put on an inclusive prom). Tear-jerker. Fun musical numbers. Meryl Streep is a goddess.

Dunkirk. This is one of my favorite stories from World War 2, and the movie is beautiful.

Rise. A basketball movie about Giannis, Thanasis and Kostas Antetokounmpo, Nigerian-Greek brothers who made it to the NBA.

What We Read

Books I finished: 

The Queen’s Fortune by Alison Pataki. Everyone knows about Napolean and Josephine, but no one knows much about Desiree Clary, the first woman to capture Napolean’s heart and who eventually became the matriarch of the current Swedish monarchy. Pataki makes a point to write about overlooked women in history, so now she’s on my list of must-read authors.

Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper. This one is hard to sum up in a few lines. Here’s what I said about it on Instagram. (If you don’t want to wait a whole month to find out what I’ve read/am reading, this is a good place to find my reading history.)

The Siren of Sussex by Mimi Matthews. A new-to-me historical fiction author that I’m looking forward to reading more from.

Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie. I suspected the murderer early on but didn’t know the how or why.

Books in progress:

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. I read this at school sometimes when I have some free time, which is almost never.

Spy School at Sea by Stuart Gibbs.

Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas. This is our book club pick for the fall, and the author’s voice takes some getting used to but he’s a great storyteller and I’m enjoying it so far.

I thought September would never end …

September ended with much more excitement than we anticipated but we did do some things that didn’t involve search-and-rescue or hospitals. Here’s a round-up of What We Did, What We Ate, What We Watched and What We Read.

What We Did

On the first day of September, we got out of school early due to massive rain and potential flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Ida. And the next day, we had no school because of flooded roads and the inability of buses to navigate their routes. So, we took a walk around the neighborhood to see how high the streams and creeks were.

This creek is not usually this high

Then I took another walk in the other direction to see the flooding in a neighborhood and a nearby park.

The road gets close to the river, but not this close
That’s not supposed to be there

I won a prize for summer reading at the Lancaster Public Library. What?! Reading is its own reward, but getting rewards for reading is fun, too. I can’t wait to use these delicious gift cards.

Local restaurant gift cards for reading all summer? Don’t mind if I do.

Board games: We Didn’t Playtest This and Super Racko. The first was a gift from a friend who was moving and would be a lot more fun with a lot more people. The second always makes me think of my grandfather.

He’s a formidable opponent.

On Labor Day: Phil had the whole day off. So, we ate pancakes for breakfast then went for a walk at Overlook Park through the meadow and some woods. When we got home we played Catan for the second time ever.

I’m pretty sure I like this game.

Field hockey games. So. Many. Field. Hockey. Games. We were on the sidelines cheering on our girl as often as possible.

Munro Step Challenge. Every year the My Peak Challenge community that I belong to for fitness, nutrition and accountability raises money for BloodCancerUK in September by hosting a step challenge. This year, participants could pick from nine different trails and walk the equivalent amount of steps it would take to complete the trail. I finished four trails and started a fifth one, totaling more than 300,000 steps and 150 miles. Not too shabby for a month.

Date night! It was Lancaster City Restaurant Week so we checked out a new place, Norbu, a Bhutanese/Nepalese restaurant where we ate a prix-fixe menu that was filling and satisfying in all the best ways. Then we went to the TellUs360 rooftop bar for drinks, which were on the house because of Phil’s connections in the restaurant industry. This still surprises and delights me when it happens.

Drinks on the roof. I love a good outdoor space.

Beer garden family night to hear our friend Amy play and sing some fun tunes. Our son was not looking forward to going then we could hardly get him to leave. We ate from food trucks: Walk-O-Taco and Holy Smoked Meats.

Did I mention my love for outdoor spaces? The Warehouse District Beer Garden is another one

Hiking, just kidding! We tried to hike the Appalachian Trail to Mount Minsi in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, but well, if you don’t know how that turned out, take a minute or 30 to read about it.

What We Ate

Seafood chowder. Husband put this together on the rainy night of flooding, and I am 100 percent ready for soup season.

Tuna Melts ala Chrissy Teigen’s Cravings.

I will bargain shop for cookbooks along with other kinds of books

I bought this cookbook on one of our shopping trips to Building Character. It’s total comfort food and these were tasty.

Tuna melts

Duck Donuts. Our church had a re-opening celebration and served these afterward. I’d never had them. Solid donuts.

Tomato bean casserole. Trying to use up our garden tomatoes while not buying tons of groceries every night for meals.

Frisco’s chicken. A whole chicken and a bunch of sides: brussels sprouts, yuca fries, green beans, fried plantains and empanadas. I used one of the gift cards I won from the library.

I always forget to take a picture of Frisco’s food because I’m ready to eat it.

At Norbu we ate green bean pakoras, pumpkin soup, cauliflower soup, lamb curry, sweet and sticky eggplant, and chocolate momos for dessert. Yum, yum, yum.

Green bean pakora
Our main dishes at Norbu
I can’t believe how pretty this looks. It was equally as tasty

Walk-O-Taco and Holy Smoked Meats at the beer garden. I had taco tots, which did not disappoint. The walking tacos looked a-mazing as well. Kids had big mama (a pulled pork mac) and a large pork sandwich.

Taco tots
Macaroni with pulled pork and jalapeños and I don’t know what else

What We Watched

LegoMasters. I don’t want to be on the show, and I don’t even really want to build with Lego without instructions, but this show makes me believe I could do it.

The Cook of Castamar. Finished it. Finally. A mostly satisfying ending. Don’t watch if you’re not into subtitles or dubbed English.

Virgin River. Yes, I went back and started re-watching it and like has consistently happened with books-to-shows, I’ve picked up on some things in the show because I’ve read the books. I finished the rewatch of all three seasons and I was reminded that when season 4 drops, it’s going to be HUGE. Cliffhanger, much?

Steel Magnolias. I made Phil watch this after a friend of ours got engaged and said the colors for their wedding were going to be blush and bashful. He didn’t love it, but I’m not sorry I watched it with him.

Kim’s Convenience. Continuing through the series.

Loki. I like Loki, the character. Am I allowed to like Loki? Also Tom Hiddleston. We’re still not finished with this series yet.

Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes. We need another travel show. This first episode was about Corsica and Sardinia.

Sanditon. Why am I just now finding out about Theo James???? Oh, yeah, the storyline is good too. I watched the first four episodes and immediately went to the library for the next four.

Clarkson’s Farm. This is one of Phil’s shows featuring one of the members of the Grand Tour.

What We Read

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny. While I was reading I learned that the world of Three Pines is becoming a TV show on Amazon and I could not be more excited. Each one is better than the previous one.

Spy Camp by Stuart Gibbs. I’m really enjoying this series with my kids. We’re switching back and forth between the Spy School series and the Upside-Down Magic series.

Upside-Down Magic #5: Weather or Not. Our next read-aloud at bedtime.

Shelter Mountain by Robyn Carr. Once I was able to set aside that the storyline is different from the show, I could enjoy it a little more.

Sanditon and other stories by Jane Austen. Once upon a time, I thought I had read everything Austen had written. Then I discovered a movie called Lady Jane that was adapted from an Austen work. (And I knew Sanditon had been a PBS show.) So I grabbed this collection at the library to see what it was all about. Sanditon is an unfinished novel and I can’t stop thinking about this. What would Austen have done with the story if she had finished it? Where did she want it to go?

Everything Happens For A Reason: and Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler. It’s not easy to love a book about dying, but this is more a book about learning to live when you’re told you’re dying. I still wanted to read some kind of happy ending, and the book ends hopefully, just not with the kind of ending I was expecting. And I’m okay with that.

Queen of the Flowers by Kerry Greenwood. More Phryne Fisher mysteries. Always good for a diversion.

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez. Our first book club pick for the fall. I couldn’t even get through the introduction without being angry. I’m so glad I’m reading this with a group.

Whispering Rock (Virgin River #3) by Robyn Carr. I can’t quit Virgin River, so I’ll be busy till the end of the year now finishing the 16 remaining books in the series.

Open by Andre Agassi. A candid and compelling autobiography by a tennis legend. His “rivalry” with Pet Sampras in the 90s was one reason I fell in love with tennis. I was a Sampras fan, but after reading this book, I realized I backed the wrong player. I feel like the sports world owes Agassi an apology for its judgments and labeling of him. In general, I hate that we make heroes and villains out of athletes and actors and other celebrities. A must-read for any tennis fan, past or present. 

A Virgin River Christmas by Robyn Carr. Fourth in the series. Sorry not sorry for all the VR books.