Fall Fun!

Wow, we have been BUSY!  I can't believe today is Halloween... Where has October gone?!

The weekend of the 22nd I went to visit my friend Melissa who lives in Texas now, and we had such a fun time!! We had so much awesome hangout time, and it was really cool to see Texas too!!  We also had AMAZING food all weekend and I think I gained like 50 pounds. Melissa lives near Dallas, which isn't too far from Waco, so one day we drove to the Magnolia Silos (if you watch Fixer Upper, you know what I'm talking about!).  It was SO fun, and I had to keep reminding myself that I had to fly back so I couldn't buy too much!!  And on the way back from Waco we stopped at an area of Dallas called the Bishop Arts District which was a really cute area, and I especially loved it because its name was Bishop! :)  The weekend totally flew by way too fast, and I can't wait to go back and see Melissa again!

A HUGE bear that was in the waiting area of an amazing Mexican Restaurant we went to right after I arrived in Dallas! They made their own tortillas there, and I had the best steak fajitas I've ever had in my life! 

Bishop Arts District! 

Me and Melissa!  I miss her already!

And this weekend Kevin and I were really busy!  Friday night we watched a horror movie (30 Days of Night), and Saturday we woke up pretty early to drive over to an area called Lambertville (the name always makes me think of Lambert the Sheepish Lion... Does anyone besides me remember that cartoon?  Anyone?  No?  Just me?) because there's a little diner that we love for breakfast and that town also decorates like CRAZY for Halloween!  After breakfast we went to a few of the streets that go nuts with the decorations and we walked around for a while! The weather was perfect for wandering around. There were lots of great decorations, but one house in particular was AMAZING. The people that live there make all of these Tim Burton-esque characters, and they're sooo creepy and awesome. I took WAY too many pictures of that house, but I hope you enjoy them.  

A cool house! 

Another fun decoration!

A cool house with Van Gogh's Starry Night incorporated into their Halloween decorations!

 And now... the Tim Burton-ish AMAZING house:  

After we finished there we drove over to an orchard we've never been to that was supposed to have some good apple picking and pumpkins! We were trying to find a new orchard to go to for apples and pumpkins, because our usual (Linvilla) has been getting insanely busy. Well... this one was not great. It looked super cute online and it WAS cute, but I think it was just too small maybe... They had quite a long line to wait to get on this little wagon thing to take you to some apple trees, and then their pumpkin selection was this little pile of like 15 pumpkins.  So... we kinda struck-out there. 

Saturday we also did a bunch of housework and yardwork, and yesterday we did more housework and yardwork. Busy busy! Kevin's dad came over for part of yesterday too to help out with a few big projects: they installed our tin ceiling in our downstairs powder room (I'll take pictures once we have all the trim up!), and the 3 of us worked on cutting down a dead tree in our yard! It was in an area where there is some poison ivy (UGH), so please keep your fingers crossed for the 3 of us that we stay itch-free! We all washed with some good soap right afterwards, so I'm hopeful we'll all be ok. We had a crazy busy weekend, but it feels good to catch up on some housework and yardwork! 

I hope you all have a great Halloween, and I'll post more this week with pictures of our Halloween decorations, pumpkins, etc!!

Busy Few Weeks! And Fall Bucket List

Well, October has been really exhausting so far.  I am definitely in need of a break, but I think we'll have some down-time this weekend, thank goodness.

Last weekend we drove to Assateague Island (it's an island off Virginia and Maryland) for a camping trip that Kevin's family and some family friends go on every year. Last year this camping trip was cancelled due to weather (hurricane I think?), and this year Hurricane Matthew was looking pretty ominous in the forecast, but we all decided to give it a shot. We all set-up our tents and were able to hang out for quite a few hours, but then the rain started and kept getting worse. We were able to look at the forecast again, and it was looking QUITE scary (Hurricane Matthew came further north than he was supposed to!), and they were predicting 3 to 5 inches of rain overnight along with strong winds (gusts 40-50 mph), so we knew we had to pack up and leave. A few people didn't want to leave, but we were able to convince everyone to go even though a few people did leave their tents and some supplies behind so they could get them the next day. We all drove to a nearby hotel to stay, and we were all hanging out together until pretty late in the evening which was nice. The few people that had left their tents, etc behind sent us pictures of the campsite the next day, and it was a great thing we'd all stayed in a hotel!!  The rain flooded the campsite, and the winds completely obliterated the tents that had been left behind.  Our drive back was pretty scary the whole way, but luckily Kevin's awesome driving skills and my Subaru (gotta love Subarus!) handled the crazy weather and roads just fine. We were EXHAUSTED when we got home on Sunday though.

Here's a screen capture of the weather map... If you look way at the top of the map, you can see the bottom of an island next to Virginia, and that's Assateague. And that red symbol at the bottom is a hurricane, for those of you not used to seeing hurricane weather maps! :) 

Here's the ocean and beach (right next to the campground) before the bad weather hit. 

Here you can see a distant picture of our campsite... That large white tent is over our tables, and the other tents (for sleeping) are all around there. 

And here are some pictures from the next morning, after the bad weather hit:

This was a tent... It's collapsed and is buried with sand and water. 

Here's some campsite flooding... That weird-looking reddish mound is a tent that had been left behind (it collapsed and is in the flooded area). 

Here's more flooding that happened in our campsite... That was the huge tent that was over the tables (it collapsed). I'm SO glad we all drove to a hotel! 

I can't believe it's the middle of October!  Where is the time going... I guess that's what happens when you're busy! My job seems to just be getting busier and busier (lots of looooong days... ), and I think it's supposed to get worse for the rest of the year. But, I thought it was finally time to make my Fall Bucket List! It's a much more condensed version than usual, because we are going to be BUSY... and some things are new and some are repeats. We'll probably do the apple orchard and pumpkins/gourds at the same time, but I think we're going to find a different place to go to this year! Linvilla Orchard (which we have been going to for a few years) has been getting REALLY popular and busy, so we'll see if we can find another good option this year. We started decorating already, but I'll take pictures as Halloween gets a bit closer!