September

Slowly but surely catching up...

We celebrated a cold, quiet, and rainy Labor Day weekend. I bought Patrick a roaster oven/smoker that he used to try to make some pulled pork on Labor Day. It turned out pretty good for a first try, although it took longer than expected! We had invited our friends the Lewises over to share it, but it turned into a progressive dinner as we ate hotdogs, then found that the corn on the cob was undercooked, so put it back in the pot and ate it 20 minutes later, then enjoyed pork sliders an hour later, with cookies somewhere in there too...thankful that Mark and Kimberly are good enough friends to forgive us for an extremely extended dinner, haha.

Our friends Alex and Emily stayed with us on that Tuesdsay night. I only thought to snap a photo of us on the bus on the way out the next morning.

The following weekend my dear friend Andrew from college came to stay with us. It was so good to see Andrew. Usually we're separated by an entire continent--Andrew lives in Davis, CA--but we've always tried to keep in touch and make time for visits when we can.

Mostly, we ate all weekend. We visited Ogawa Coffee to try some fancy drinks.

We took a sunset cruise in the inner harbor.

We visited the library and enjoyed the maps exhibit on Shakespeare.

And we toured the Taza Chocolate factory.

The next weekend my parents visited. We went up to New Hampshire into the White Mountains for the day.

The next weekend both my parents and Patrick's parents were in town that Friday night. We enjoyed chicken bog, biscuits, and collard greens together for dinner. The next day my parents flew back home, we enjoyed lunch with Patrick's parents, and dropped them off for their cruise to Canada.

That night we were knocked out! Four busy weekends in a row (and three more to come...ooh, foreshadowing to the next blog post, haha). And just like that, September was over. What a busy month.

Meanwhile, the weather had changed. After Labor Day, it really was like a lightswitch--warm and pleasant in August, then chilly in September. The short, short summer was over. Growing up in South Carolina I knew that the "official" beginning of summer was Memorial Day and the end of summer was Labor Day--but that was pretty meaningless because it was in the 80s from April to November! Here, those days truly seem to mark the beginning and ending of warmth. But September was a nice month to enjoy running outside and riding my bike around.

Otherwise, nothing new to report for September. Four more days in October then I'll post this month's updates!