pumpkin, tomatoes, and choir

This week I caught a bit of the fall bug. My friend made a pumpkin pie (from an actual pumpkin even). She let me have a piece. And I've been thinking about pumpkin ever since then. We had pumpkin pancakes two mornings in a row. And today I made a pumpkin pudding (pretty much the custard part of the pie minus the crust) in the crockpot. I'll get the recipe up tomorrow (providing I get a bit of sleep tonight--ahh--a promise with a condition). And I plan to try out all kinds of other pumpkin pie recipes including, drumroll please, a breakfast pumpkin pie. Oh Mamma. Because I would never eat regular high-sugar pumpkin pie (with whipped cream) for breakfast. No, not me. Must be someone else. And speaking of eating when you should stop eating, I also dried some tomatoes this weekend. They were the little baby ones. I stole a bunch from my friend Vanessa,

(aren't they beautiful)

cut them in half, doused them in salt, and dried them in the dehydrator from my mother-in-law. Don't you love generous friends.

Some of them got a little brown, which has never happened before. I can only blame the salt??? But they tasted the same. But since they were brown, I was forced to eat them--in concentrated sweet acidic bunches. I ate them until my gums hurt from all that concentrated goodness--they were so awesome to me. Maybe I should save some for Halloween.

Here are some red ones. Yummm.

In other news because surely there is more to my life than fall vegetables: This weekend we got to have stake conference. It was great. Elder Anderson came and his talks were wonderful, but so were those of our local leaders. How do I know this, you may ask, since surely I was out with my four monsters, um, children. I know this because my good friend Sally offered to watch the kids so Kip and I could sing in the choir. Which we did. So we got to listen uninterrupted to conference. I didn't even bring anything to write on out of habit of being unable to write anything not in crayon, and I sorely wished I had brought a notebook along. Though I will admit that after 2 hours of sitting with no bathroom, drink, or time out in the hall breaks, I thought, "Gosh, 2 hours is a long time to sit." Especially when you haven't done it for 8 years or so. Anyway, thanks Sally and Ella for the babysitting, thanks Cara for the pie, thanks Vanessa for the pumpkins, thanks Jeanie for the dehydrator, thanks Kip for not like tomatoes so I can eat them all and Emma for eating any that happened to fall on the floor. (And if I should have thanked you for something, but didn't, I hope you forgive me.)