Busy and loving it.

Whew! What a day this has been and I'm sure will continue to be!

We are making a sudden trip up to western New York to surprise our grandparents for mother's day. Mom says it's her mother's day gift. We haven't been up to visit Grandma and Grandpa since last Easter, so we're all quite excited. That, plus the fact that this is a surprise visit, has us all running on adrenaline around here. Folks keep bumping into one another in the hallway and doorways, and I've given up asking "what's that?" every time there's a strange noise, like suitcases falling or ice chests being dumped.

I've been a little busy myself - and loving every minute of it. I spent yesterday packing so I could be free to bake today. I was in the kitchen all morning. We like to make most of our food that we eat on trips - it's cheaper and tastier - and making enough food for 3 days all in one morning is quite the challenge!

I made two pies - one apple, and one peach - for Sunday dinner. Sadly, I didn't have time to make the fillings from scratch, but the crust is my favorite recipe! This is the peach pie:

Here's Banana Bread for a breakfast. I'll have to tell you the story behind these loaves sometime. I had a recipe in front of me, but kept experimenting and throwing new ingredients in, and leaving some out...I ended up with a new recipe. It looks and smells great! ...Thankfully. :) I made dinner rolls for Sunday, too, but didn't get a picture of them. Justin chopped lots of carrots for snacks, and Mom has spent most of the afternoon in the kitchen.
Oh yes - in making all that banana bread, I had 6 banana peels left over. I ripped them into strips, stuck them in the food processor, and - whizz! - got this:
It's great fertilizer for rose bushes - they love it. I spread it on the ground around Mom's budding plant. It blends right in with the dirt, and the nutrients will soak into the ground slowly next time it rains.

Tonight my family is hosting a sort of fellowship game night at our church, (we planned this before we knew we'd be traveling tomorrow!) and we have to leave for that in exactly one hour. I'm sure we'll get back right around bed time, and after that, it's up and on the road sometime after 4:00am!

I have lots to do, so I'm off for now. I'm going to do an experiment while we're on this trip - I've never tried writing posts ahead of time and setting them to publish on certain days, but I'm gonna give it a whirl. ...So you may hear from me in the next couple days, or you may not. We'll see!