Fun, Food, and Friends

Three highlights from today/tonight:

(1) In preparation for a demonstration speech that Abigail will give in her gifted/talented class at school, she learned how to make Kuchen today with Mommy.  Kuchen is a pie-shaped coffee cake with a filling of custard and fruit, and it's quite popular in this area.  Susan walked her through each step and photographed Abigail in the process of making it so that Abigail can put those photos into a PowerPoint presentation to show her classmates.  At the end of the slideshow, she will take out the already-made Kuchen and slice it to share with everybody.  (Food-based demonstration speeches were always my favorite ones to have my students do in speech courses!)  And I've got photos:

(2) Susan helped the girls carve pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns.  I'll post photos on Halloween so that you can see them all lit up at night.  Susan also roasted the pumpkin seeds for snacking.

(3) Susan and I joined our friends Leslie and Dave out for supper and drinks this evening.  At Spaghetti Western, we had cocktails, appetizers, and main dishes that included, for me, a delicious sweet potato gnocchi with kale, Italian sausage, mozzarella cheese, and a drizzle of olive oil . . . just fantastic!  Then we went to Applebee's for after-dinner drinks and dessert.  They're very fun people, so there was a lot of laughter throughout the night (perhaps the laughter increased as the drink count increased!).