Exciting News!!

Well, I have some EXCITING news!!  I GOT A NEW JOB!!!!  I start on December 4.  It's an awesome job with a nonprofit that does research for hospitals, and I'm so excited about it!  I'll mostly be doing a ton of data analysis (especially Excel), which is the stuff I love about my current job!  So, I think this is going to be a great fit for me. My current job was NOT happy when I gave my two-weeks notice (it was actually just over two weeks notice...) though, especially since one of my other coworkers had just given notice the day before I gave mine!  So, it was terrible timing and I do feel bad about that... but it couldn't be helped. It was definitely just time for this change. So, my work has had me BUSY!! They gave me a REALLY massive project that I was supposed to have 5 weeks to do, but instead I have about 2 weeks.  It's been chaos. I think I'm on track to finish it though thanks to some crazy long hours...

You guys, tomorrow is Thanksgiving!! HOW did that happen?  I have no idea... It really snuck up on me this year.  I'd even bought some Thanksgiving cards for my family and friends, and I totally dropped the ball on mailing them :(  I'm so sorry, you guys. I feel awful about that... The days have just been a total blur with super long work hours. Literally this morning I was like "Oh my gosh, I didn't mail the cards... " and I also realized this morning that I didn't have any of the supplies for the pies I'm supposed to make tomorrow.  So, my dear sweet husband braved the grocery store today to get pie supplies for me while I worked.

A few weekends ago I went to visit my dear friend Melissa in Georgia!  She was living in Texas, but she recently-ish moved to Georgia, which is a pretty quick/easy flight from Philly!  I flew there on a Friday night after work, and then we hung out all day Saturday, and on Sunday afternoon I flew to San Francisco for a 1-day work trip.  Yes, a 1-day work trip.  I got to SF on Sunday night, and then Monday I had a meeting alllllll day, and then first thing Tuesday morning I flew back to PA.  It was chaos.  But anyways, back to my fun weekend with Melissa!  We went to an amazing winery in the mountains that has a wine cave!  The cave wasn't as cave-like as we were expecting, but it was still awesome and the tour was SO fun and they had some GREAT wines!  On our way back we stopped by a little town that I cannot remember the name of and did lots of shopping in their downtown area!  It was such a fun day, and I miss Melissa already!

The fireplace at the winery! 

Grapes! 

Melissa and a LOT of wine! 

Our tour guide getting ready to open the doors to the wine cave

The wine cave!  It's kind of more like a bunker.. but it was still awesome.

Me and Melissa! 

Me and Melissa! 

Beautiful! 

Last weekend McGee and I had our mini Thanksgiving dinner with just the two of us!  Our menu consisted of turkey breast (it turned out amazing!), mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, and I also made an apple pie.  I forgot to take a picture of it, but it was a lovely meal! Tomorrow is the big Thanksgiving meal with McGee's family, and we're in charge of bringing two pies.  I'm going to make apple pie and pecan pie, because I feel very comfortable making both of those and I've been too stressed out about work to be brave and try something new :)  haha. 

And with that, I think my Fall Bucket List is complete except for watching Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving, which we will watch tomorrow.  Tomorrow is also the Thanksgiving Parade!  I've been keeping an eye on the weather in NYC because I always enjoy the parade more if the weather is a little crappy (it adds some excitement!), but I think the weather is supposed to be beautiful tomorrow.  So... dang it.  Haha :)  And yes, I realize it makes me a horrible person that I hope for bad weather for a parade...

I hope you all have a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving!!  I miss you all, and I'll be thinking of you. 

Wow, November is flying by!!

You guys!!  It's the 10th of November already?!  Time is flying by!  The weather has been sooo weird lately, so I think it's quite clear that we've broken the earth.  Last weekend it was warm and humid - highs were in the 70s.  Today the low is 19 degrees.  So... yeah.  The earth is broken.  It's mostly feeling like Fall though, and the trees are looking beautiful!! 

Our house! 

Last weekend was SO busy.  McGee's dad came over on Saturday, and the two of them worked on installing a drainage system in our side yard.  We are on a VERY steep hill, and the side yard gets sooo flooded every time we get heavy rain (which is fairly often). It's been impossible to grow grass, and it's always a soggy muddy mess. So, they spent all day working SO hard!!

Once evening rolled around, McGee had to quickly get changed and then the two of us headed into Philly to go to his work's Harvest Ball!  We went last year too, and it's a really fun time.  It's super fancy and it's kinda fun to get all dressed up.  We did a lot more dancing this year, so that was fun!!  It was quite a late night!

Kevin's dancing while waiting in line for the open bar!

 

Me and my handsome husband!  We had so much fun. 

Pretty Philly! 

On Sunday we were EXHAUSTED!! But McGee and his dad weren't quite done with the drainage project yet, so they worked on that a bit more!  But after that we didn't do too much. We did some work around the house, and that's about it!!  Oh and I decorated for Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone's November is going well so far!!

Halloween! And Happy November!

Wow, it's already November!!  Crazy. I hope you guys had a great Halloween!!  Ours was great, but we didn't get quite as many trick-or-treaters as usual! We think that was partially because Halloween was on a Tuesday so people just weren't out for as long, and also because our street was totally under construction (they were working at re-paving our street, but were only at the part where they had removed the original pavement... so the street was really messed up), and there were huge construction vehicles parked on our street... so it probably looked kinda unwelcoming?  Just a theory.  We sat outside with our neighbors though, and we had a few beers and chatted, and we still probably had around 15 trick-or-treaters. We told each of them to grab a big handful of candy, and we still had lots leftover!  After it was pretty clear that the trick-or-treaters were done for the evening, we went inside and watched Hocus Pocus (again!), and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

We carved pumpkins the day before Halloween, and I looooove how Kevin's pumpkin turned out!!  His pumpkin had this amazing dent on one side of it, and he fully took advantage of it for the carving and it just looked amazing.

Our pumpkins!!  Mine is the smaller round one and McGee's is the taller one with the cool dents on its face. Isn't McGee's awesome?!  It looks like he has cheekbones! 

Our pumpkins! 

Our front window!  Our bushes under our window need trimming... haha.  They are getting way too tall and cover part of the decorations! There are blue bat lights in the window too, so it looked fun once it got dark (but the pictures weren't good...). 

Our front door! 

I found these packed with the window decorations!  These are some fun cards and gift bags I've saved that look super cool for Halloween.  I usually put them out with the rest of the decorations, but they were hiding with the window decorations this year! 

The weekend before Halloween we went to a local brewery we'd been wanting to try!  It was a really cute little place, and the beers were good! It's called Locust Lane. They had an awesome bar, and you could see through a window to the brewing area. They also had some huge TVs, so we watched some football while we were there!  And they usually have food trucks set up outside, but it was raining SO hard and it was really gross outside, so the food trucks stayed home.

The window to the brewing area!  

This was their Oktoberfest beer - It was my favorite!  And you can see the awesome live-edge bar! 

Our sampler! 

That was about it for the weekend before Halloween!  We also spent a ton of time cleaning our house because it had been awhile since we'd had a lot of time to focus on deep-cleaning and house projects.  I hope you all had a great Halloween, and are having a good November so far!