In Your SELF Interest: Loving Fall

October has got to be the greatest month of the year. Maybe December? One of those months is the best. The weather and trees in October might give it a slight edge.

We pulled out our fall decorations last week, all five of them (a couple pumpkins and leaves). Shae and I decided one day that we need more, so we pulled out some craft stuff and got to work.

And now we have a ghost and spider to add to our fall decor. Yay! (Don't you just love that timeout chair there in the background? It's been getting a lot of use lately).

Last Friday we were going to hike Watkins Glen, but then it was raining all day. We still wanted to get out so we drove up to Syracuse and did the number one thing to do in Syracuse according to tripadvisor.com, we went to the mall. But seriously guys, this mall was pretty stinking amazing. HUGE. Quite possibly every store that exists can be found in that place. We got lost a few times. So the mall was cool, but the drive was just amazing, even with the rain, the trees are just so so so pretty right now.

Saturday, the weather was perfect. We should have gone to Watkins Glen then. However, we had already planned a trip to Hollenbeck Cider Mill with some friends. Again, these trees. Love.

One of the main reasons we wanted to go was because we heard there were Apple Cider donuts. We were pretty disapointed to find out that they weren't actually Apple Cider donuts, just sugared, but it was still cool to see the donuts made (a fresh donut is a fresh donut) and watch apples be pressed into cider.

It was quite the happening place. Looooong donut line.

After grabbing some cider and donuts we found a park to hang out at and enjoy the weather. (We also dipped our donuts in the cider and made our own Apple Cider donuts which was actually quite good).

Poor Eppie, sometimes she is scared of Shae.

The weather has been good this week so we've been trying to get out for plenty of walks, because again, this is surrounding us:

Fall break was this Monday and Tuesday. I found out last week from one of the ladies from church. I asked Darin, "Why didn't I know that fall break is next week?" Darin responded, "Because it won't really be a break for me." Darin has the majority of his classes on Wednesday and spends most of Monday and Tuesday doing homework in preparation for Wednesday anyways. We kept our expectations low for any kind of a break. But you can imagine how excited we were when he called us at 3 p.m. on Monday and said that we should go explore (the weather was AMAZING on Monday). We quickly left the house to go get him (well, not really quickly because leaving the house with these two kiddos is never a quick process). We went and did a small portion of the Cascadilla Gorge hike right by campus.