Mmmmm... can you smell that?

So in keeping with the autumn mood, guess what I have baking in the kitchen right now? Yummy apple crisp. The perfect fall treat. One of my all time favorites; there's nothing better than the smell of brown suger, cinnamon and apples!
And the reason I have a dessert baking away at 10:30 in the morning is because we're having a guest over for dinner tonight. Ryan's former boss, John Dolan, is here in Ann Arbor speaking for a few days at Pfizer. John Dolan is one of the biggest names in that field; everyone in most every job in that industry knows of him and would love to get the chance to work with him. Ryan swears the only reason he got this job with Pfizer was because John was his number one reference and he worked so closely with him.
Anyway, we were planning on going out to dinner with him at some point while he was here but then a group of Ann Arbor Pfizer people planned a dinner for John and Ryan was invited to that, so that's what Ryan did last night. And then he called me on his way home last night and asked me if I would mind having John come over for dinner tonight.
Luckily I had worked my but off all day cleaning up our disaster area of a house. I finished folding the last of six loads of laundry, got all the camping gear cleaned up, organized and packed away, got two loads of dishes through the dishwasher, and attacked both the kids bedrooms (even going through closets to take out summer and too small stuff) and the toy room.
I'm not normally real picky about how my house looks for visitors. I keep it pretty clean, it just tends to get quite cluttered very quickly. So if you drop by my house you will usually see a few dishes in the sink, maybe a few articles of clothing laying around (my kids tend to shed), and quite a few more toys scattered all over the place. That's just how we live. It had just gotten really bad the last week or so with my "surgery" and camping and everything. So needless to say, I was quite relieved when Ryan called to okay inviting John over and I could look around my spotless house (okay, probably shouldn't go so far as to say spotless...) and say "sure" without having to jump up and start cleaning up like a madwoman. However, knowing I would have Porter here this morning, I did have to run out to the grocery store when Ryan got home at 10pm to whip up a decent meal for this evening. Here's what's on the menu... Baked Salmon w/ Tomatoes , roasted red potatoes, roasted asparagus, maybe a rice of some sort, and for dessert... Apple Crisp!!!

I am surprisingly a little nervous about having John over though. This isn't like just having our friends over for dinner. This is like a real Grown-up! I know it's silly, but I'm feeling a little self conscience about certain aspects of this little place we call home. Like how we still have our tv in our living room sitting on a clothes hamper. Or that I have prints without frames as well as frames without pictures sitting all over the place, like that's how I decorate. Or that we have two tables in our dining room at the moment, one still covered in boxes that never got unpacked. Or that Ryan never got the mower fixed and the lawn hasn't really been nicely mowed in almost a month. I know I'm being silly... John is just about the nicest guy you'll ever meet. I'm sure he could care less about any of that.
It'll be so nice when I actually feel completely moved in and done. How much longer will it take?

Gotta go retrieve my bubbling dessert from the oven!