Busy October

Hey there, everyone. This has been a busy month! I mean, check it out--this is only my eighth post, and here it is the 25th of the month. I'd normally be at number 20 or something. ;)

Fall is in full bloom here. It is my favorite season, by far. I just love it. Check out one of the trees by my house.

I love how the beautiful colors end up everywhere. One of the things I like about the end of fall is when the leaves start falling and you walk on a golden or red carpet of leaves.

As you know, we went to Houston for a conference of Nathan's and to see family. Two days after we got back, Sarah and Ryan arrived for a visit. Sarah is one of my best friends from Houston. I think we've known each other since like second grade. We became good friends in high school because we did all kinds of singing events together, and we lived together and became really close in college.

She and her husband, Ryan, are such neat people. They are so easy to be with because they're great conversationalists and know how to have fun. Let's see . . . what else can I tell you about them? Oh, here's a good one. Interesting fact about their love story: they got engaged at Thanksgiving and married on Christmas Eve. So Sarah planned a wedding in a month!

One of the things we did was to go apple picking. You can't be in New England in September/October and not go pick apples. Ryan was kind enough to wear Noah most of the time, since Nathan was in San Diego (more on that later).

Here we are in the apple orchard:

Noah loved the pumpkins.

Ryan, being the goofy spaz he is.
Sarah, standing there watching as if this is the most normal thing.

He calmed down enough to take a really nice picture. ;)

We also went on a Duck Tour, where a crazy tour guide drives you around Boston and then onto the Charles River (the vehicles are WWII amphibian vehicles, so they're good on both land and water). The guide invited everyone up to the front to drive the boat and have their picture taken. When Sarah and Ryan got up there, the funniest thing happened. We headed straight into a group of about three little two-person sailboats. Neither Sarah nor Ryan nor the tour guide noticed this, so all the boaters were totally panicking, standing up in their boats, but not knowing what to do to avoid this much bigger vehicle coming straight at them. Thankfully, the tour guide noticed just in time and threw the Duck into reverse. So that's how Sarah and Ryan nearly killed six boaters. Here is the picture:

Nathan and I didn't go get our picture taken because Noah was asleep in my lap. Note how cold they look in the pic above. That's because it was cold. Sarah said she didn't remember having been that cold in a long time, and that by the end, her feet were numb. Well, I don't think any of the rest of us were that cold, but it definitely was the chilliest day so far this fall. It was pretty breezy, too.

For the first few days Sarah and Ryan were with us, Nathan was in San Diego on a field trip with an oil company. It was basically a recruiting trip where they invite a few people out to look at some outcroppings and learn a bit about what they'd be doing if hired for this company. At the end, they told everyone that they'd be in touch in a couple of weeks if they were interested in talking to them about a job. Well, no later than three business days later, Nathan got a call from a bunch of people on speaker phone who told him they were ready to make him an offer. There is still more talking and stuff to be done, but it was really cool!

Yesterday, Lori drove into town to have her smart little self interviewed by one of the local news channels about her Bargain Shopper Lady website. They needed a place to film the interview, so she asked if they could come to my house. I agreed, so the little film crew came out and did that yesterday. It was neat to see how all of that happens! And the people were really nice. They also thought Noah was the cutest thing ever, which may have a little bit to do with why I thought they were so nice. ;) Anyway, Lori did a great job, and they said they may show the interview sometime during Thanksgiving week, since they asked her some questions about saving money on Christmas shopping.

And this brings us just about to today. There's not much going on today. I was going to go shopping today while Nathan watched Noah, but I'm a little sick, so I think we may have to hold off on that.

That's the update!