John's birthday was this past Friday (th 14th) and we went to 
Outback Steakhouse for his birthday dinner, to follow tradition. We reminisced about what we were doing last year at this time - going to the Outback in Santo Domingo for a completely different expercience. We're so glad to be home. Saturday morning, we took off for Angola to 
visit John's family. Mom Roth's specialty is making creative cakes for birthdays - and this year was no exception! She decided to go with a Dominican theme considering how the last year of our lives was spent, and she recreated one of the carnival masks from La Vega for John's cake. It was incredible!
Then, on Sunday, we stopped in Ft. Wayne on our way home to attend the Johnny Appleseed Festival that we talked about all year long since we missed it last year. We met my friend Jamie there and walked around soaking up the smells and sounds of autumn and enjoying the classic fall festival foods like apples and carmel and chicken and dumplings. Yum! We're so excited about fall this year! I'm going to make my first applie pie of the season tomorrow! 
In other news, Gramma Verch gave us a quilt as a housewarming present. Here it is pictured in our living area. It's a quilt made of hundreds of different green material. It fits perfectly in our green themed spare bedroom. It took her years to collect the hundreds of materials for the quilt, so we feel lucky to have such a labor of love and family heirloom in our posession.
