It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne and other friends at Living to Tell the Story .

We finished out our family stay-cation last week with some more games before my oldest son headed back to his home. Then we crashed for the rest of the weekend. 🙂 It never gets any easier to say good-bye, but we look forward to the next visit at Christmastime. Meanwhile, here are some of the best parts of the last week.

1. Homemade cheesecake and compote. One of Jeremy’s birthday gifts was a set of two stacking pans that go in the Instant Pot in order to cook two different things at once. Something was said about cheesecake, so he put together a recipe from two he found and made them in his new pans in our Instant Pot. Then he made two different compotes, one with strawberries and one with blueberries. We had some chocolate syrup on hand for those who’d rather have that. So good! Jim used some of the leftover blueberry compote on pancakes and I think Mittu said she poured some over ice cream.

2. Laptop repair. My laptop had been having issues for a while, so I asked Jeremy to look at it while he was here. After trying different things, with nothing working, we copied my files there onto a flash drive and had to reset the whole computer to its initial factory specifications. Jesse finished doing what needed to be done after Jeremy had to leave. It’s working much better now than it has in ages. I’m thankful and happy they were able and willing to work on it.

3. A successful school beginning. Timothy started kindergarten through an online home school program this week. He’s been eager and excited and responding well. Jason and Mittu have had several confirmations that this is the right path for now.

4. Meals brought over. Mittu made several meals for a friend whose husband was in an accident, but then discovered the family did not want any visitors. All but one of the meals contained gluten, which Mittu and Timothy can’t eat. So they brought three of them over here. You know I always appreciate time off from the kitchen. But with getting back into the routine after the family stay-cation last week, it’s been especially helpful.

5. Lunch with a friend and free pie! A friend and I had had to cancel plans to get together a few times in a row. We finally made it to lunch this week. We took advantage of O’Charley’s Free Pie Wednesday. I had a half club sandwich and the loaded potato soup (I brought home half of each) and the French Silk pie–sooo good. I had not been to O’Charley’s in years, so it was nice to get reacquainted with them. But the best part was visiting together and catching up.

And that’s it for the last week of August! September means fall is coming soon—and cooler temperatures!