Happy Autumn

Today is the first day of autumn, and here in the mountains of east Tennessee, I am running my air-conditioner. Sigh. Oh well, I'm going to celebrate fall nonetheless! Here's just a few fall-related activities on-tap for the newlyweds:

• Already purchased 2 pumpkins and 2 baskets of yellow mums, on sale at Lowe's this past weekend. I couldn't help but laugh when we walked into church yesterday and saw the exact same baskets of mums on the altar, where flowers are always displayed. We Germans/Lutherans are all the same; we like to enjoy beauty at a discounted price. Mine are displayed on our deck, where we can look through the sliding doors and enjoy the sunshine on them. We'll carve our pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns when it gets closer to Halloween.
• Because I work from home, I feel the need to get out a couple of evenings during the week. Because we're trying to save money, though, our dates have to be pretty cheap, so they end up being a jaunt to Starbucks (and at $8 for 2 coffees, our date isn't exactly cheap, I know). For this week's outing, I'm going to indulge in my first pumpkin spice latte of the season. (And as long as I'm talking about pumpkin spice lattes, I have to send you over to read this post by chatting at the sky!)
• Around the middle of October, we're going to start an Annual Orchard Day tradition. I basically want to go to the orchard to pick apples, drink hot spiced apple cider, eat a huge caramel apple, come home to bake and eat a huge apple pie, and essentially get very sick on all things apple.
  

• Visit our beloved Biltmore Estate when the leaves have turned, preferably around the 1-year anniversary of our first visit there together, which was November 2, 2007 (one of my favorite days ever).

• And speaking of leaves turning, we're going to drive the Blue Ridge Parkway and behold sights such as this:

• Watch "Last of the Mohicans" -- a very autumn-y movie (it was filmed in part on the Biltmore Estate!).
  
• Finally, we'll travel to Indy again for my niece Ada's birthday (big 5 years old, Zu-Zu!), we'll fly to New York for Thanksgiving with Marty's Aunt Becky (much more on this to come...going to New York City will be like going home to the mothership for me, retail-wise), and we'll do other things like taking lots of walks and doing lots of cuddling while sitting outside in the crisp, chilly air while breathing in a little bit of that lovely smoke from burning leaves...

Welcome Autumn!