Happy Fall, y'all:)

I am one of those crazy people that loves all things pumpkin! I love pumpkin coffee, pumpkin coffee creamer, pumpkin pie, etc.... I LOVE the taste of all things pumpkin. I love, love, love crisp weather, too, but not too crisp. I enjoy being outside when it is just warm, and not sweltering, when there is a cool breeze, but not hot wind. The allergies here (here, being Virginia, apparently the worst place to live if you have allergies- and if you never had allergies, you will have them in this region of the world. Eventually.) are unavoidable, so I can't air out my house the way I'd love to, but we make the best of it- you know, with Zyrtec or something of that nature (I can only air out the house when it is below freezing, or the first few days of early spring, before the first blooms show up- all five of us have wicked allergies).  I digress...

Back to this season: pumpkins, apples, harvest time... It is really a fantastic time of year!  We are so lucky to live in a place where the leaves change colors so vibrantly. I love to see God in creation. This year, for some strange reason- probably because I'm just getting older, and weirder, I see God in nature. And it is awesome. The ocean, the mountains - Virginia has both- are places that God is so big, and I am small but significant. So, look for splendor in everything!

Virginia is great for fall festivals, too.  We have totally taken advantage of living here by going to fall festivals, craft fairs, mountain drives, picnics, and pumpkin patch places. We've never been to any of the Apple groves, but I understand those to be pretty spectacular, too!  So, my point in writing about all of this is to illustrate how awesome it is here, and how many varieties of activities there are to take advantage of. And a lot of them are free- which is nice, because if you have kids, you probably have a budget.  Like allergies, the high cost of things around the Northern Virginia region is unavoidable.

The other reason for talking about how awesome Fall is, and how wonderful this area is, has to do with plain 'ol optimism.  This week, with the rain (does Virginia have a monsoon season I was unaware of?), with the shorter days, it's easy to start feeling a little down.  This family, all of us- even the dog- have seasonal affective disorder (unofficially diagnosed).  When it is overcast, rainy, cloudy, etc. for any length of time, we start to go in hibernation mode.  I don't like to hibernate until February, simply because I don't like the cold.  So, when I noticed that my family was starting to mope around, I started to look up the activities going on around the area (on fredparent, of course:)).  I'm thinking we are going to stock up on some vitamin D, and update our rain jackets, and go out anyway. I lived in Germany as a kid, and if we waited around for the sun to do things, we would have never done anything (in Stuttgart, anyway, it rained a lot).  So, what keeps us inside, now? I know the answer is technology, but I'm really trying to fight that battle right now, and get us up and out, simply because it's healthy.  Plus, there really are a lot of cool things and goings-on to take advantage of around here!

So, happy Fall! Happy pumpkin-spice everything time! Enjoy where you live, with whom you live, and get out there and just do it.  It's Fall y'all, and it's a happy time to be in Virginia.