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! 

It's almost Halloween!!

Oh my gosh you guys, I am SO excited that it's almost Halloween!!  October has truly flown by.  I figured I should update my Fall Bucket List since we've done more of the items now! 

We went to Linvilla Orchards as I mentioned in my last post, so we picked some apples and we also picked out our pumpkins and gourds!  We just haven't carved our pumpkins yet, and we'll probably do that this weekend or maybe on Halloween...  And we've decorated INSIDE our house for Halloween, but we haven't done our window/outdoor decorations yet!  We'll definitely do the window/outdoor stuff this weekend, but I figured I'd show you the indoor decorations now: 

This is our TV stand... Our green plastic bucket up there is what we use to hand out candy, and then these are our mummy lights!  I love the mummy lights. 

Here's our little random decorations on our TV stand... a few monsters, a cute raccoon, and Snoopy! 

Our fireplace mantel!  The lantern pumpkin on the right is a new decoration we got at Linvilla this year!!  All of the others we've had for a while :) 

Our little side table with a few decorations and our gourds and little white pumpkin! 

Kitchen towels!  We have a few more too, but these are the only ones we're using right now. I got that Hocus Pocus towel last year!  

This pillow was a gift from my parents (last year I think? Or maybe the year before...). 

We have a few more random decorations, but I figured this was enough pictures! :)  We've been busy making soups, breads, Crockpot meals, etc too, but I'm just not ready to check those off the list quite yet :)  We've also seen a few of the Halloween movies off our list, but we still have a few more great ones to go! And tonight we are going to start Season 2 of Stranger Things!!  We are SO excited.  We just re-watched the first season recently (for the 3rd time?), and it's just such an amazing show.  If you haven't seen it yet, stop what you're doing right now and go watch it on Netflix! You'll love it, I promise. It's such a good show to watch to get you in that Halloween mood too!! 

I have to travel for work the day after Halloween (BOOOOOO.... Ugh...), but I will try to post an update that next evening from my hotel so you can see our carved pumpkins and our outdoor decorations sand I'll tell you about our Halloween!  I hope you all have an AMAZING Halloween!! 

Fall Activities, Timmy's birthday party, and a soccer game!

This past weekend was another blur!!  We had a LOT of fun though.  On Friday night we were able to just chill at home, and we spent some time hanging out in our back porch area (the weather was sooo perfect!!) and having a few drinks and relaxing, and then we went inside and watched Hocus Pocus!!  We'll probably end up watching Hocus Pocus again before (or on) Halloween, but it is just SO good. 

On Saturday morning we went to Linvilla Orchards!  We didn't make it there last year, so it was especially awesome this year since it'd been quite a while since we'd seen it!!  We got there shortly after it opened, so it wasn't crowded at all which was amazing :)  We spent some time walking through their store areas, and then spent quite a while walking around looking at all of the pumpkins!!  They also had an area with a bunch of carved pumpkins, and some were VERY impressive!!  We picked out a few AMAZING pumpkins (I really love the ones we picked out!!), and a few gourds too because I think they're SO fun and I love that they're all so unique!

Kevin with our pumpkins and gourds! Our pumpkins have a LOT of character this year. They're kinda amazing. 

Can you see the David Bowie one to the right?  So good. 

It's Jack Nicholson from The Shining right on top!  So good. 

These were so fun!  They're outdoor fireplaces. They were too big for us (we'd have nowhere to keep them the other 11 months of the year...), but they were awesome. 

After we loaded our pumpkins into our car, we went over to the apple orchard area and wandered around and found a bunch of great apples!!  We got enough for me to make at least one pie and have some leftover for just eating :)  It was such a nice day for wandering around and apple picking!!  When we were done and ready to leave, we noticed that the pumpkin area was getting SO busy!  I'm really glad that we got there early so we didn't have to deal with those crowds! :) 

We drove back home and worked on a few house projects!  And then once evening rolled around it was time to head into the city to go to Timmy's surprise birthday party!  Our friends Anthony and Rob hosted the surprise party at their apartment in the city, and my goodness was Timmy surprised!!  His reaction was amazing. I didn't capture his surprise on camera because I was too busy enjoying it, but I got a few pictures while we were hanging out at the apartment!  After we all spent some time hanging out there, we went to a few bars!  Kevin and I left around 12:30 to head to the train station, and we ended up getting home around 2am!  My gosh we were hurting the next day.

Here's City Hall!  My favorite building in Philly. 

Some of the trees around the city are decorated with beautiful lights!  So pretty. 

Such a pretty city!  I love how it's such a mix of old buildings and modern buildings. 

Here's part of the group of people that surprised Timmy!  That's Juliff on the left, then Anthony, Ashley, me, McGee, Rob, and then Timmy is in the front! 

The next day we had a soccer game to go to though!  It was the last Philadelphia Union game of the season, and Kevin and his friend Juliff were the "Season Ticket Holders of the Match" so they got to go into the tunnel when the players were heading onto the field, and they also got to stand with the players on the field before the match and get their picture taken with the team!  I was going because I wanted to try to capture a few pictures of them on the field and with the players and stuff (plus it was such beautiful weather for a game!), but when the Union employee was introducing himself to Kevin and Juliff before the match he was like, "I'll get a wristband for your wife too!  No reason she can't join us for everything!" so I got to tag along too!  It was crazy being on the field.  I grabbed a few pictures, but I don't have a copy of the professional photo of us with the team yet. 

Our tailgating spot before the game started! 

McGee and Juliff were SO excited!! 

We're in the tunnel as the team is getting ready to go onto the field! 

A ceremony right before the match for a player that was retiring!  After this is when we got to walk to the middle of the field and have our picture taken with the team!  Then we went back to our seats. 

Such an amazing view from our seats in the stadium!  

That was our weekend!  I hope you all had a great weekend too!!  I can't believe Halloween is almost here!!  Crazy!!