Weekend Recap

Remember when I said summer was over? I was wrong. Fall in the South is fantastic. This weekends highlights include:

1. Cooking a fantastic dinner for Stephen and Amanda on Friday. I was feeling like being indulgent and showering friends with love after a rough week, so after work I headed to Weaver Street and got all sorts of delicious things to cook. I made twice baked potatoes with broccoli and bleu cheese, a big green salad with pumpkin seeds, pecans and dried cranberries, and steak rubbed with herbs from the garden that Trent grilled. For dessert I made a big pear and cranberry crumble that we ate with local organic vanilla ice cream. Everything was delicious and it was lovely to spend time with good friends eating good food.

2. Up later than I had hoped on Saturday. Trent headed out for Parent's Weekend for the crew team (taking parents out in boats, showing them around, etc) and I laced up for my long run. First an hour in the forest with Pilot, seeing lots of friends along the way, then a quick stop at home for hydration/food and I headed out to Maple View Dairy. Ended up running 2 hours and 45 minutes, so I am thinking about 18 miles? It was a great marathon training run and a lovely day to be out running.

3. Home and just a quick nap before we decided to head to the beach! Thomas, Alecia and Emily were heading out and invited us. I was pretty sure we weren't going, after Trent's incredibly busy week (midterms and filming his documentary) and an emotional rollercoaster of a week for me, but I am SO happy we did go. They planned everything, we just brought clothes and Mr. P. Carolina Beach lets you drive right on the beach and camp, and after October 1st, dogs are allowed off leash. Perfection. We all crammed into one truck (with Pilot in his crate in the back of the truck, big brave boy) and left around 1pm. The weather was perfect, we played in the ocean, read lots of good books (I am reading Nick Hornby's "Juliet, Naked" a perfect beach read), played games, made lots of doggie friends, grilled hotdogs for dinner and had s'mores and sparklers for dessert. Pilot loved all the socialization and got braver and braver with the waves (especially when other dogs were playing). I took him for an early morning walk on Sunday and we watched the sun rise over the ocean, which still seems wrong to me! But gorgeous. Tons of pelicans and beautiful boats, lovely to just relax and think nice thoughts. We stayed until about 1pm on Sunday and then drove home.

4. Home and unpacked the car, and then Pilot's friend Abbey came over. They played for a while, but I could tell he was exhausted. Then lots of studying, long talks with good friends, leftovers for dinner and a sleeeeepy pup. We decided to take advantage of his exhaustion and he spent his first nice sleeping outside of his crate. Big boy!

Productive (hopefully) weekend ahead. It is our anniversary this weekend, but we are going up to the mountains the following weekend to celebrate (just worked out better for our schedules). Hoping to get some experiments checked off the list, write a lot more, be there for friends, and enjoy this AMAZING fall weather. It couldn't be a more perfect temperature right now.