November saw the beginning of the Kids Against Hunger project at our church. KAH is a humanitarian food-aid organization with the mission to significantly reduce the number of hungry children in the USA and to feed starving children throughout the world. Kids Against Hunger The founder, Richard Proudfit, came to instruct about 12 of us the first evening with many of our members continuing the packing process the next day. We are all really excited about taking this on.

The second weekend of the month we saw grandson Jacob's winning baseball team play into the final elimination rounds with, as my grandfather would have said, much hootin' and hollerin'. Sunday evening they had moved to the final game, winning 11-4 and were ready for the Championship game itself. But something happened. They did not get off to a good start. The other team scored several runs early on. Our guys began to walk around their positions, heads down, kicking dirt. Parents were cheering them on, urging them to SHAKE IT OFF, Get your heads back in the game!, Come on, Angels, you can do this!! all to no avail. It was like we were watching a different team. The boys were disappointed, their dream of winning first place dashed. Their heads had surely left the game. They finished second and smiles were hard to find at the trophy award ceremony. But, like most accomplished players, our pitcher's smile had returned by the end of his ride home. All's well that ends well.

The third weekend of November was filled with a visit from Round Rock daughter and granddaughter for my birthday, a trip to the Galveston Opera House, front row, with my cousins for an hour and a half of stand-up by Rita Rudner, voted Best Comedian in Las Vegas, and the Alternative Christmas Market, a favorite of mine where gifts from third-world countries are offered with the money going directly back to the villages. Gotta say the Rita Rudner show was a winner! We laughed until we cried for 90 minutes straight - no bad language, just purely funny stuff, mostly about relationships between men and women, always fertile material for comedians. The actual day of my birthday brought lots of FB, email and text messages, snail mail cards and phone calls and was just the best birthday ~ everyone made me feel really special all day! A good friend took me out for lunch at a great new restaurant downtown and stepdaughter Lisa plus friend Gale came in for dinner with us that evening (balloons and all but no singing waitstaff ~ whew!) Somewhere in all that, we also managed to see the movie, Blind Side, the true story of Michael Ohr, the number one 2009 draft pick of the Baltimore Ravens, a really good movie.

Thanksgiving was spent with a wonderful group of 20-25 friends who are more family than friends. Even though the meal wasn't at our house, I still managed to cook a bit ~ taking my cranberry-orange relish, fruit salad and Christmas pecans, along with a spiral-baked ham and three pies from Flying Saucer picked up by Bill. This morning we went to a conference downtown to hear my friend tell her recovery story, then we drove to College Station to visit with friends of 42 years and see their new home. Long time friendships are so special.

Last week also saw the beginning of dressy country club holiday parties and casual neighborhood open houses. And lest anyone throw a pie at me, our tree is now up and the house is decorated.

If you're still reading at this point, you either really care about my journal entries or you are really bored! LOL