Fall festivities...

How grateful we are for good friends and (Finally! Albeit off and on...) fall weather!

Fall foods dinner and pumpkin carving with Joey, Melanie, Steve and Najeda:



WURSTFEST! Nothing like awesome meat on a stick and delicious fried pickles with good friends Jess and Ian:
Sunday lunches:
Happily our Sunday lunches aren't only a fall occasion. Love these folks!


Who needs the Gypsy Picnic anyway?! Anything with Russ and Chow is a good time.


Grateful.

C and the big 2-9...

I flew back from Vegas just in time to get in some quality birthday celebrating time with C. We started out with an epic muffaletta sandwich at Mandola's Italian market....mmmmm.....so good. We then went to a cooking class at Whole Foods where we festively focused on pumpkin and squash. We made a pumpkin soup and squash filled crepes with an awesome pumpkin and shallot sauce (our favorite dish of the class.) There was also a squash and hazelnut salad which we've since made and enjoyed as well as a pumpkin cake which was pretty tasty as well. Being the foodies we are it was super fun to take a class together. As we sat down with the rest of the group to taste our creations I was unsure about the dinner conversation with the strangers. However, when one lady posed the question "so who's everyone's favorite food network chef?" I knew everything was going to be great. We rounded out the day browsing through REI. Such a good day.



On Sunday we celebrated C and Halloween with our wonderful friends the Wildes, Danny, the Eskanders and the Beauregards. Good food+great friends+some rock back= a great 29th birthday. Thanks guys!

Mother and Daughters....

Ahhhh Curves convention.....always a great time! This year's convention was particularly awesome with a surprise visit from Marie. So fantastic! We had a great mother-daughters trip with lots of good food, shopping and none other than the Osmonds. You know, I've always sort of gotten a kick out of the Osmonds. Like a "how do they somehow re-become famous every few years" type of kick. Don't get me wrong, I saw Donny in 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat' and he was phenomenal, but I still never understood how every so often the world would once again be paying attention to the Osmonds. My mom would always remind me that they were legitimately really famous at one point in time and thus still have fans. Anyways....long story short, the show was great. Seriously....really fun. Big smiles and all the Osmonds did not disappoint. The trip was quick, but a perfect way to spend some fun quality time together. Thanks Mom and Marie!

How much is your fort worth?

It's always a good time when I get to tag-along with C to a conference. Near the end of October we headed a few hours north to Fort Worth and had a great time. Downtown Forth was actually much cuter than I had anticipated and the historic Fort Worth stockyards did not disappoint. Not only did we see the daily cattle drive, but we happened upon a cowboy poetry festival. Not bad for a quick afternoon. We devoured some seriously good steaks and enjoyed being the city slickers looking at the local scenery.

And yes....they really were handing out free tobacco samples. BLEW. MY. MIND.

Another epic visit....

Oh how we love having visitors. We were so excited to have Molls and Mike come. The opportunity to spend time with those we love while showing off some of our favorite spots makes for a handful of perfect days. Sometimes we wonder if we keep our visitors TOO busy.....but we sure do have fun.

We started out in San Antonio for some Texas history at the Alamo, a walk on the River Walk (where we ran into the International Accordion festival.....LUCKY!) and finished off the night with dinner and a stroll in Gruene.





No trip to our neck of the wood is complete without some serious Texas bbq and some quality time on the river. We had a blast and Molls and Mike even joined the locals for a swim in the river after we were done kayaking.



Mike was kind enough to let us all tag along to Houston with him where he took his Pediatric boards and we took some time to visit San Jacinto - the birthplace of Texas independence. Very fun....but I won't lie, the highlight just might have been a stop at Buc-ee's on the way home.



We ended the trip with some quality time at the outlets (ahhhh....sweet, sweet outlets) and Austin (I love Austin. So much.) We hit up some food trailers for some tacos (soooo good.....as in I'm-still-thinking-about-them tacos) and cake balls. The bats were out in force and did not disappoint and the Capitol was beautiful as always.



Molls and Mike even squoze in a ride on the bike before the headed home - the perfect end to a great trip!