It's Fall!

I love Autumn! It's certainly my favorite time of year. I love sunny, cool, glorious fall days. And I love football. And I love the baseball playoffs. Speaking of which, congrats to my very own hometown boys - the National League Champion St. Louis Cardinals!

Hubs and I had a great, lazy weekend. We headed down to Baltimore on Friday evening for a wind band concert. And then on Saturday, we went to a local orchard to pick our own pumpkins!

Paulus Orchards was a neat place that was hopping on Saturday. You can actually pick your own apples as well. We opted to pick pumpkins and buy some apples in their farm stand. That way, we could get a smaller amount of a couple different varieties.

It was quite a picturesque Autumn afternoon, sunny and just a bit cool. Here was the view of some of their orchards.



We headed down the path toward the pumpkin patch.



There were a lot of pumpkins to choose from, and these cute little red wagons that you could use to tote your haul.



We had fun wandering around the field of pumpkins looking for the ones we wanted.



When we went home, hubs wanted to paint the pumpkins. I have an embarrassingly low level of artistic skill. So he took it upon himself to paint a cat on one and the STL Cards logo on the other (per my request). Our cat Gabs (a.k.a. the most adorable, best cat in the entire world) served as model. While he painted, I read. I read a lot.



Here's our porch. It's looking mighty adorable.



We stole the monogram (is it a monogram if it's one letter?) idea from Megan. Technically my letter is a G since I haven't changed my name. I can't decide what to do about that, so I might as well try on that E via pumpkin.

We're very excited about the Fall Classic getting started on Wednesday. We're showing our St. Louis pride out here in PA - deep in Phillies territory.

Go Cards!

winston-salem

Continuing with our trend of very busy weekends, hubs and I headed down to Winston-Salem, North Carolina this past weekend to hear one of his pieces performed.

We weren't able to leave until after I got off work on Friday, so we ended up splitting on the drive down there in half. We stayed in Staunton, VA on Friday night (after I admittedly slept a decent part of the way there). We picked up a good audio book to listen to on the drive, which always makes long drives easier to stomach. It's pretty long, so we'll take turns finishing it on our commutes. It's called The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss. We're both really enjoying it so far. It's historical fiction with some mystery and humor mixed in as well. Hubs called it a mix of Sherlock Holmes and Little House on the Prairie.

The other thing that helped the drive was pretty scenery like this.



Winston-Salem seems like a neat place to visit. I wish we had more time to explore, but we did get to walk around Old Salem a bit. We were able to stay on the campus of Salem College in the guest house, which was a fantastic old house.



Our four poster bed was very high off the floor. Which was very cool, but I'm guessing that steps to the bed would get annoying long-term.



As an aside, it was also really, really cold. Foolish me thought that going south would mean warmer weather. No, it meant weather in the 40's. We didn't know how to adjust the temperature in the house, and it was 56 degrees overnight.

The actual concert went very well. It was in honor of a local composer named Margaret Vardell Sandresky for her 90th birthday. The mayor of Winston-Salem even came and declared it her day. She seemed like a very neat person, and I'm sure I would have enjoyed talking with her more. I really liked the piano trio she wrote for the occasion, and I am very much a new music snob.

I hadn't heard hubs' piece before either, and I really enjoyed it as well. Yes, I have to say that, but it's true. He'll be the first to tell you that I'm honest when I don't like something. But it went really well, and the mezzo was great. It was also very well-received by the (large) audience.

After a very chilly night, we walked around Old Salem a bit before hitting the road. I loved the old buildings and would love to explore further when everything is open.













I love all of the history surrounding us here on the east coast.

Luckily we were able to return home (to a very cold, 54 degree house) in time to watch the Cards game. I plan to be sleep-deprived as long as they stay alive in the postseason (which will hopefully be for 10 more wins).

We have more busy weekends ahead, as I'm on-call for work next weekend, we're running down to Baltimore for a concert the weekend after, and I'm hoping for a trip to the PA Ren Fest before the end of the month.