Well, our stories just keep getting better and better. Let me begin at the start. Randy rented us a truck from Uhaul today to continue our clean out of the storage and we had ordered a chair and buffet from Pier 1 for the kitchen, so I would have more space to store “goodies”. We thought as long as we had the rental truck we could pick up our order and clean out more stuff we didn’t have room for that we had brought from Texas. So we take our Halloween masks with us, knowing that we would be wearing them to haul the new items upstairs. To insure that the neighbors don’t recognize us, we stopped and bought Randy a wife beater shirt to wear with his Richard Nixon mask while unloading the truck here at the house. We don our masks and drop off unwanted furniture at the Thrift store and head to Pier 1 to pick up the new furniture. The back in of the Uhaul is loaded with more things to bring upstairs so we push that towards the front of the van and arrive at Pier 1. The nice young men help us load the 400 lb buffet in the back of the van and I am signing the papers when all of a sudden we hear a huge “crash”. We turn around and a sweet little ole lady has stepped on the gas instead of the brake and t-boned another car, swirled it around and she then crashes into us. Now she is trapped between the Uhaul and the other man’s car, so we are trapped there on the street at Pier 1 waiting for the police. After we check to be sure everyone is ok and they are, I immediately remember that I have no make up on, my hair is flat to my head and people are staring at us. We both look like we haven’t had a shower in days. The police come and we finally leave with the new furniture headed to our house. We arrive now, not only in a Uhaul van that has in huge orange writing all over the side “Rent Me for $19.95/day” but the whole side is totally smashed and makes the most awful sound, as the wheel is about to fall off. We quickly put on our mask and unload the old stuff into the trunk of my car. We are NOT going to bring any of this stuff in until after dark. Now we are trying to unload this huge buffet up the back steps (17 steps in all) and in the back door. It is so heavy that we have to stop with each step just so I can catch my breath. We make it finally up to the back door where it is still sitting until we can get the energy to move it where it will be permantely placed in the kitchen once I unload the piece of furniture that is where it will go. So tomorrow, we will have clean out day for two other pieces of furniture to make way for the two new pieces. We headed back to Uhaul, having to drive about 20 mph in case the wheel fell off, which it didn’t. It took a little over an hour to fill out the paper work and thank goodness Randy had taken out insurance on the van. So we turn it in and get back into our car and head home. We will be busy tonight unloading bags and boxes that are in the back of my car. But we’re not worried, we have already washed his wife beater shirt after a long day of loading and unloading. He is ready for dark to when we will empty out my car and make room for next Saturday….we found 3 thrift stores today that we haven’t had the chance to explore…….Hope they get the van ready before too long, sometime tells me we will be needing it in a couple of weeks.

Yesterday, WordPress informed me that my next post, which is this one, would be my 500th post and the blog has received 14,290 views over the past two years. I decided that instead of posting a recipe for the 500th post, that I would give you a little history of why I began this blog. Back in 2009, Randy and I went to see Julia Julia and during the movie he leaned over to me and said, “you should be doing that and if you don’t, shame on you”…..so walking out of the theater, I decided then and there that the recipes that were continually being requested or when phone calls came asking me for ideas of what to cook; these items should be on the blog. So the very next day I began to blog. My son, Jason, had mentioned a year before this that I should be putting all my recipes on a blog so they would be in one place, but being the lazy, undisciplined person that I am, I put it off. But now, well, I was determined and felt that God had spoken to me through Randy, so hence, the blog. As I began to post recipes, stories began to come to mind that I just felt I wanted to share, and as I began to write, ideas just kept coming. Cooking is one of my passions, but people are even more so, and as Randy and I had many opportunities to open up our home, I began to realize that it really wasn’t the cooking that was my passion, but serving and cooking for others. Because of that, each and every time we have had people into our home, we have been so blessed to share with others a sweet time of fellowship around the table. That is one of my greatest joys. Sitting around the table, eatting and sharing our hearts and thoughts, laughter and sometimes tears……but each of these occassions has given me the desire to try and capture how much we both enjoy sharing food with friends and people that we hoped would be new friends.
Thank each of you for reading this site and for all the encouraging comments….To God be the Glory….for His faithfulness, for His inspiration and for His goodness to our family. Chocolate Castles has been not only fun to write, but has been a joy to my heart to share so many special times in our lives with you. Hope to hear from you from time to time, and again, thank you for your friendship and encouragement! Please feel free to share the blog with your friends and family!

I wish all of you could have been with Peter and Penelope Punkie (yes, we are already changing our names for Fall) this morning.Peter tells me that we are going to storage this morning to begin cleaning out and to “let” me bring home some of the Fall decorations to begin decorating our house for the season. Well…that’s all you need to say to me, is “let’s decorate” and I am ready and out the door. We get to storage and begin going through each of the boxes, only to learn that there are boxes and boxes of clothes that need to be taken to our church thrift store and still more furniture to get rid of as our house here will only accommodate half of what we had in Texas. As we begin to look for the Fall Decorations we realize how much we are going to be bringing home to use. We went after 3 fall trees, plus the decor that go on them……..we end up making 3 trips to the car, or as Peter calls it, the “mercedes pick-up”. There is too much for one trip home, so we load the car and head home, knowing that we will be coming back for another trip of fall clothes and decorations. On the way home, Peter pulls into a Halloween store and tells me to get out. I look at him wondering what in the world. When I inquire what are we doing, he says to me, “you don’t think I’m going to unload all this stuff without a costume on do you,?” The neighbors have already called “1-800-I Am A Hoader” on us and he thinks that we will be getting another visit from them if neighbors see us hauling more things into our house. As we “camouflage” ourselves, we begin unloading and hauling upstairs, bag after bag and container after container. We see neighbors peeking out their windows, wondering where in the world all this stuff is going to go, as their houses are exactly the same size as ours. So, we wait until after dark to unload all the bags of “fall clothes” “fall decor” and hope that they dont see us. We are convinced that they probably think we are carrying up dead bodies in bags, but Peter assures me that if we were doing that, we wouldn’t be using the white garbage bags, as all the bags we see on Unsolved Mysteries are always the dark black or green bags. So we are sticking to white to hopefully lesson the neighbors concerns.
Since I didn’t get through writing this post yesterday and am just returning home from Costco today, I have another update. Peter and I take his small 2 seater car to Costco, knowing that we are only going for cheese, gas and Dr Peppers. He reminds me that I cannot buy anything other than these items since we are in his car. Well……we walk down the TV isle and low and behold they have the TV that he has been looking at for 3 months on sale. Do I really have to tell you the rest of the story. Yes, we buy it. We carry it out to the car and of course it is too big for the trunk so he pushes up the seats as far to the front as they will go and proceeds to push the boxed TV behind the two seater. We are pushed up against the dashboard, with our knees up under our chins, and he decides that it will be impossible for him to drive because he can’t position his leg to even step on the brakes, so I unfold my body out of the car and switch seats with him. Cars are passing us, laughing as they pass. We finally make it home, after stopping twice just to let our legs, which have fallen asleep, due to no circulation, get some feeling in them. We arrive at home and begin to unload this when our worst nightmare happens, our downstairs neighbor is walking out and sees us carrying not only a crate of Dr Pepper, but the television. He remarks to us, “are you sure you have room up there for that” which tells me that he was watching us out his window yesterday. I need to close and post this, as I am going to go hide a few of the bags which we brought up yesterday. Our neighbor already informed us that his ceiling is sagging and we are expecting a knock on our door in the morning from “1-800-I Am A Hoarder”.

We are home from Cameron and Mandy’s wedding and still feeling a little festive from having all our meals with our kids and extended family, it is easy to already get excited about the upcoming holiday season when we will get to be with family and friends again. That never seems to come fast enough, but I have discovered a secret that I just had to share. As soon as the plane flew over the border of Texas and knowing that I was about to re-enter the land of No Sister Schubert Rolls, I got a little down, not only were we flying back to grocery stores which do not carry breaded fried okra, but they also have never heard of these amazing rolls. So…upon awaking our first morning back in Sushi-land, I got on the computer, contacted Sister Schubert Rolls and found that they ship all their mouth watering rolls to anywhere in the USA! Well….I guess I don’t have to tell you that I have 12 pans of rolls coming my way. Since I am cooking breakfast for a brunch next week, these ladies out here are going to be introduced to these amazing little gems.
Sushi and salad lovers, watch out……you are about to discover a little roll that will have you saying, “ya’ll” and “git back here” before you know it……Some ladies might need to go for a mani and pedi or massage to get regenerated……..me, I just need to bake a pan of SS rolls, and I’ll be dreaming of grits, gravy and green beans seasoned with bacon tonight. Meals as I remember them are about to “git” good again!

Am headed to Texas for our son’s wedding. Will not be posting until Monday, September 5th! Have a great Labor Day and get out a favorite recipe and try it out for some sweet friends.