Pumpkin carving, caramel apples, karaokee, and great friends!

A few weekends ago our good friends, Chris and Aimee, drove up from Richmond to visit with us and Greg and Erica. This was the first time Chris and Aimee had seen Greg and Erica since Easter 2007, so we were all excited for the reunion!

Erica and I had planned lots of fun "fall" activities and fortunately the weather cooperated. To get things started we carved pumpkins. I always love getting to carve pumpkins, mostly because I never really did this growing up. My mom thought it was more "fun" (aka less messy!) to simply draw faces on our pumpkins with magic markers. Now that I'm old enough to use a knife, I do enjoy carving out faces, and am proud to say that I don't even need to use a stencil. Greg and Erica went the stencil route, and we lovingly (ok maybe not lovingly) refer to their winking pumpkin face as "The Sarah Palin." Chris and Aimee also went the "free hand" route and carved out a Virginia Tech logo, the school that brought all of us together!

We also made caramel apples. Oh my my my, were these good! We got creative with our topppings, and while it didn't turn out to be such a good idea, Erica and I even double dipped our apples in the caramel...tasty but I think I may have taken 10 years off of my teeth! So worth it though!

We had a great dinner, I even used the gathering as an excuse to break out my china, something I'm always happy about in the beginning and regret when I'm stuck hand washing dishes for an hour. Thankfully Aimee and Erica were great helpers (can they just move in!?)

The boys got a fire going outside where we enjoyed some after dinner drinks and more conversation. And to top the evening off, we played "American Idol" on the Wii. Hilarious! Our poor neighbors!!

It was a great weekend, and we've already got another one on the books for January when we'll head down to Chris and Aimee's. We are so thankful for our fabulous group of friends!