We carved the day before Halloween, which was gorgeous -- sunny and 65 degrees, with the fall leaves lit up all around us. Posey tried to join in the fun, but Kevin was not amused. At one point, she stole some of our candy corn popcorn and we realized that if we threw some popcorn outside of the carving area she'd stay occupied:
Abby sent us pictures. She volunteered to help build the bonfire, which she said was very cool, and then got to circle it with her classmates as it burned:
We thought we'd be able to compete in person for this last year of the Harry Potter 5K (a fundraiser for CASA of the Blue Ridge), but Benji had a marching band competition on the same day and we decided it would be too much to do both. Abby was actually the only one of us to complete her virtual 5K in time for her results to be counted, but the other three of us did the 3.1 miles the next day. It took a while for our medals to come in the mail, though, so we did not get a picture promptly. Finally remembered to take one last week, and Halloween seemed like an apt day to post it:
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| We all chose different houses this year: Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff |
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| It was cool to see all four year's worth of medals lock together to reveal the whole crest |
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| Benji insisted on wearing his and was mad that they did not make the cords longer for the bottom two pieces |
Last night, Kevin's softball team played in the finals for the season and came out as champions. Benji and I went out to watch and were able to catch a picture of the victorious team:
We had a lot of active time this weekend and decided on a chill Sunday night. Gammy had to cancel our regular Sunday dinner, so we decided to scrap the healthy meal we had planned and make a fun charcuterie board instead. Kevin had been hoping for a Halloween movie, so we chose Hocus Pocus 2 and this fun spread to go with it:
Every year, we try to get out to hike Shenandoah National Park close to the fall foliage peak. We luckily had Sunday wide open this week and made our way up to the park. We stopped at a few pullouts along the way and took in the amazing foliage on the mountains. We chose the Loft Mountain loop for our hike, which we found in our Shenandoah trails book. Kevin and I both thought we had been to Loft Mountain before, but when we arrived, we realized this was a whole part of the park we had never explored. There was a fun wayside with a restaurant and store, as well as really pretty trails. The boards had two hikes listed, but neither were the hike shown in our book, which was about a half mile on the Frazier Discovery Trail and two and a half miles on the AT. We passed several parties on the Discovery Trail, but once we crossed over to the AT, we only came across one other group (and they looked to be AT through-hikers) the whole afternoon. It made for a very peaceful hike with beautiful colors everywhere. The book suggested that there would be two peaks with views of the valley. We found neither, but all agreed it was a fantastic trade-off for the empty trails. We stopped at a few more viewpoints on the way out of the park to get our fill of the wide sweeping park vistas, but were super happy with how the hike turned out:
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| Love that he still asks to hold my hand sometimes |
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| These trails cover land that once belonged to settlers who were cleared off to make room for the park. Signs of their homesteads are everywhere, there, including in these untended apple trees in the woods |
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| Someone finally offered to take a picture for us, although I think I like the selfies better |
