That, remarkably, was a fine weekend.  It was only “remarkable” in that we’ve had a string of way-too-busy weekends recently, and this past one finally felt like we kind of dialed it back and took it easy.  The weather was uncharacteristically poor Friday for Halloween, but we managed to make the most of it.  We kicked it off with a short happy hour at Hop House, then we joined some friends for Trick or Treat.  I haven’t made the rounds with little kids in a long time, and I must admit it was a good time.  Them little buggers were wound up tight.  The littlest was just over one year, and she was quite comical.  It took her about two houses to figure out “go up to door, get some candy,” and then she was off to the races.  Had to keep an eye on her or she’d be a block in front of us before we knew it.  It sprinkled most of the time, and when it finally started raining hard we scooted back to the house for some chili and pounds of candy.

Saturday was “errand day.”  I don’t know if we’ll ever get another weekend without at least one of those;  Not in the foreseeable future anyway.  Before making the rounds, I went out and planted my new garden in the backyard.  The landscapers built a large box out of redwood, and I was sorta excited to get some Fall veggies in it.  I went with cauliflower, onions, beets, chard, (whatever chard is,) and kale, on the advice of the guy at the garden center.  I don’t know how long I spent making sure I had everything spaced according to the directions, mixing in fertilizer, watering it all in, etc.  Two days later Teagan dug it all up though, so I guess however long I spent was time wasted.  After that we “went to town” and got our provisions for the week.  Geez, we live in the boonies.  Hit the hardware stores, the grocery, the Costco, all the places you have to go when you make it to The Big City.  We managed to sneak in a good lunch at Chicago Fire too, which took the edge off the trip.

Sunday we decided the house was in enough order to have some guests over for the football games.  Or, at least it was after three hours of furious unpacking/sorting/rearranging.  I fired up the smoker and threw on a small brisket (imported from KC on Donette’s last trip) and a pork butt.  While those smoked away, I lit up my new gas grill and put on four pounds of wings to tide us over.  I used a recipe from the KC Star that supposedly mimics The Peanut wings.  Honestly, I’m not sure I could come up with any resemblance to the ‘Nut, but they were darn good at any rate.  It was a keeper recipe for sure.  Not to mention, I was just excited to use my new grill.  As far as the games, the Chiefs weren’t even on so we missed that one, and the 49ers were rather depressing.  But, the feed all came out good so it all evened out.