Fall adventures 2013

Fall has always been my favorite season and this fall in South Carolina certainly hasn't disappointed me. The scenery is so gorgeous and the weather so warm, I hardly miss cold Utah. We still take long walks in the campground but we also enjoy just driving into the mountains. The fields of sunflowers and cotton blooming make me feel like a little girl again and all I want to do is run through them.

                  Who wouldn't?

   Our only friends are Dustin's cousin Garrett and his fiancé Ashley. I just love her and I'm so excited for their upcoming wedding. They're nice enough to squeeze in some time with us even though they're both so busy working, going to school, and planning a wedding. About a week ago we carved pumpkins while having a fall feast of soup and pumpkin pie. 

      Working hard on some pumpkins

 

  

  Garrett carved a Clemson Tiger on his pumpkin freehand, Ashley's was a mini mouse, Dustins was a creepy tree and mine was Jack from a nightmare before Christmas. 

 

 

 

Garrett and Ashley also help us celebrate Dustin's birthday. Dustin swears this was his best birthday ever and I'm going to have to think up something good for next year.

To surprise Dustin I made him a candy sign and hid 26 balloons around the house. Each balloon had a message inside and he had to receive all 26 to find his birthday present. I have to say the best part was the candy sign. He laughed so hard he couldn't finish reading it without wiping his eyes and he's been talking about how much he loved it ever since. He seems to think I came up with the sign on my own and I don't have the heart to tell him that I just saw it on Pinterest. 

This last weekend Dustin's mom and dad came up for a visit. We went out to dinner and I had the BEST sushi ever!! 

 

     

      My sushi was wrapped in steak and then fried!! What!!?!??! Delish. 

       Look at all that lobster! Yummy. 

The next day we went to Atlanta and toured the Coca-Cola factory and the Georgia aquarium. To be honest the Coca-Cola factory wasn't my favorite. The best parts were seeing all the old Coca-Cola merchandise and tasting the different Coke products from around the world. 

       

     Mom reaching for her Diet Coke.

I absolutely love aquariums and the Georgia aquarium is huge! Almost too big. One room you walk into is just one huge fish tank. Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling tropical fish. This picture doesn't do justice for it but it was amazing. 

I also saw four huge whale sharks!!! So scary! They fed them while we were there and it was totally unreal. I was utterly terrified of the sharks until they told us their throat is only an inch wide. How crazy is that? I'm still scared of them though. A stark is a shark.

 After seeing penguins, sharks, Beluga whales, albino alligators, otters, dolphins, and so on, we finished the day off at the Atlanta temple.

  

I love exploring my new home and making plans for the holidays but I sure do miss my family wish they could be here to have all these adventures with us.