Goodbye Fall

Our beautiful fall weather is quickly disappearing (though, thankfully, the leaves are still gorgeous!), the heat is on at our place, and I'm still freezing. I'm also procrastinating my last assignment of graduate school, which means the blog is getting updated again!

Halloween was a lot of fun! Hannah was Tinkerbell (or according to her, "a flutterfly"), and James and I were pirates. We celebrated the whole weekend. Fuqua Friday involved a children's parade. Our friends threw a great Halloween party with very creative games. Hannah got tons of candy at the ward Trunk or Treat (Greg Osmond's Oscar the Grouch costume stole the show!). The festivities ended with Jessica Stucki's fantastic sausage creation baked in a pumpkin!
Thursday was family night at the Duke basketball game, so of course we couldn't miss. Even if it meant coming straight from the hospital (hence no Duke apparel), parking in the forest, and carrying Hannah through the mud to get there! We soundly beat Cal Poly, and Hannah spent the night yelling "Go Duke!"Yesterday, I spent the morning with some of my favorite ladies (my Duke pediatric nurse practitioner group) for Christine's baby shower! Awesome brunch at Watts Grocery to go with the awesome company. Love ya, ladies!
Over James' fall break, we decided to take a weekend trip to Charleston, South Carolina. What a wonderful city! Our first adventure was a ferry ride to Fort Sumpter, the site of the first battle of the Civil War. The fort is still fairly intact and a lot of fun to explore. Hannah really enjoyed sticking her head in the "so big cannons!"
The big hit of Charleston is the carriage ride. We loved it (even Hannah)! We passed by the classic Charlestonian homes with the great porches and saw the most haunted building in the city.We made an after-dark stop at Battery Park, which is right on the water. It was a beautiful night (actually quite hot), but we couldn't stop laughing because Hannah REFUSED to take her coat off.
Before heading home, we stopped at Boone Plantation, which is best know for its Avenue of the Oaks. We especially loved learning about slave life in the original slave homes on the property. Hannah especially loved pulling grass out of the ground and spreading it in the slave homes.
P.S. Hannah said her first self-conceived sentence this week: "Mommy, it's cold outside"