Is it fall at your house yet?

Happy Fall!

Texas doesn't really give up its death grip on summer until mid-October-ish, but it did celebrate Spetember 1st with a wonderfully cooling storm, which by itself was amazing, but when we peeked outside, we got this too:

Happy Fall, everyone!

Fall in the Mountains

Last Monday, we drove up the mountains to Alpine Loop for a picnic. At the beginning of October, just before winter hits and turns everything gray, the mountains are all orange and yellow and red and gold and beautiful.

As soon as we set Tyler down on this path, he put his little head down and just marched.

Tyler found some other hikers during our dinner picnic. After this picture, he ran to ambush them.

We got there a bit later than we wanted to, so we missed the sunset on all the colors, but it was still fun to get out and see the beautiful changes that fall brings to our neck of the woods.

It Starts

I cannot even express how excited I am for the holiday season to begin.

Tyler and I have been waiting all week for Oct. 1 to get all our spooky decor out. And this is just the tame, tasteful Halloween stuff. We haven't gotten into the spider webs and ghosts to hang out on our porch and front window...yet.

Each year, around the beginning of October, I have a moment where the transition from normal person to haul-out-the-holly and deck-the-halls happens. This year, it happened when I passed a holiday-themed Airwick display at the grocery store. It was instantaneous.

Christmas music on the radio! Presents! Baking! Christmas trees, ornaments, family gatherings, love, cute nativity scenes, mistletoe!

I bought two refills for my living room air freshener, Vanilla Indulgence and Fresh-baked Gingerbread. I am perfectly aware and okay with the fact that I am playing right into the manufacturer's hands.

Happy October, everyone!

Fall's a coming.




(pictures from last fall)

I get more excited with each season's passing this year, because we are one season closer to being finished with school. But it does make me a little sad. I really love fall in Utah.

This will be our last fall with:

orange and yellow mountains
crisp evening walks through campus
hot apple cider from the creamery
cool mornings at farmers market
perfect afternoons at the neighborhood park

We're excited to move on with our lives, but I'm starting to think I'll miss our old life here. I'm going to savor it this year.

Tyler will watch its passing with a bag of chips. And a protective scowl.

Fall is here!

Well, winter is officially on its way. We woke up this morning to a windy 39 degrees, and unfortunately, it looks like snow for this weekend, so we'll see how that goes (cross your fingers, everyone!). Tyler got to try out his new snow gear this morning. The mittens seem to be going over well; he couldn't stop chewing on them. Something kind of funny happened on one of our runs this week: we were running past this older lady's house, like we do everyday, and on this particular day, she offered us some zucchini. I guess she had some extra from her garden this year, and we thought it was nice of her to offer. Well, she brought out this gigantic zucchini. This thing is the size of Tyler! One way or another, I ended up with the thing, so if anyone has any good zucchini recipes, let me know, pronto!