pumpkins and letters

By some standards, it's fall here. The temperature has stayed below 90 for the last few days. Evenings and mornings are getting cool. The church down the road has their pumpkin patch. I stopped today to get a few pictures.
Young families were out taking pictures of their cute kids, some in costume.
I got to two of my favorite Austin eating establishments this week: Hula Hut with my first two Korean tutors who I met more than four years ago and Kerbey Lane for an early breakfast with my cousin. One of the special pancakes at Kerbey Lane was pumpkin, so my cousin and I shared those and the green chile, chicken, sour cream omelet. There's such good food to be had in Austin!

Almost two days of the week has been spent reducing my number of boxes of stuff, mostly stored in my Grandma's shed. It's interesting to go through the stuff that I thought was worth keeping four years ago. About half of it I decided was not worth the space to keep it, even though the space is free. In four more years, I might look at the stuff I kept and wonder what I was thinking.

While I was going through the stuff, I ran across a bunch of old letters and journals. I'm not throwing those away yet. I didn't let myself read many of them, but the ones I did look at are so great. Reminding me of friendships, many of which are not as close as they used to be, but so great to look back on. As I took a long walk through the beautiful old neighborhood my Grandma lives in tonight, I was thankful for all the people who have made my life what it is. People who have taught me, who I have taught, who were and are close. I'm blessed to have been formed by wonderful communities along the way.

I'm leaving Austin Monday morning for a weeklong trip up to Colorado, seeing family and friends along the way, and then a two week long stay in Colorado. I'll be back to Texas after that.