Freeze, Mushrooms, and a Birthday

We had a certain frost/light freeze the night before last and last night, no doubts about this like the other two weeks ago.

And I never thought I would be so sick of mushrooms as I got last week. Still no Oyster mushrooms but I hit upon a huge patch of Blewits, there where a lot of 'em. Some are in the freezer. A few days ago when food was cooked and being dished up I told everyone, "For a special treat today, no mushrooms!" I received a look of gratitude. And we all pretty much are mushroom lovers here.

We have gotten the furnace vacuumed, wiped down, and blown out, in general ready for another season. It has kicked on a couple times in the last few days but the house is still mostly warm from the summer and it is supposed to warm up a bit again in the next day or so. Hopefully we won't have to use it a lot this year but it would be nice to have a little more winter than we had last year.

My eldest is turning sixteen. For months she has been going around telling us, "Brianna's birthday is November 18th." I have been trying to get her to say "my" instead of her name; I am getting mixed, but poor, results. I'll keep trying. She also has a list of DVDs and CDs with the words "Happy Birthday Brianna" written at the bottom. It is funny, she can write her numbers but if a title has a year in it or she is asking for a specific edition, she brings her list to someone else to write the year down. She tells us what numbers to write but we have to write them. I did get her to start saying the years right; she was saying "one-nine-nine-three" and now she will say "nineteen ninety-three." She is on a day countdown now until "the" day; 20 more days. I don't recall her ever being this excited over her birthday before. We will probably go to the new "Twilight" movie for her birthday. She likes going to the movies, we have been following the series as a family, and it comes to the theaters on the 16th-- seems perfect.