How to spend another rainy Saturday:

Start with the breakfast of champions:


Yard work. Before it started raining, Ben helped me plant the remainder of the 100 bulbs I bought and then I mowed the lawn.

Playing in leaves:


It started raining, but we stayed outside anyway:


Catching falling leaves:



The rain stopped so we headed out to buy our pumpkins for carving:






Then it started to pour. We took cover in this tunnel:


The rain was clearly not going away, so we picked out our pumpkins in the rain and got soaking wet. We all had a blast:




A trip to IKEA to pick up some shelving...the girls LOVED "helping" Ben assemble it:

Art

Today we pulled out all of Amelia's artwork from her Dolphins class last year. Sadly, I needed to dispose of it to make room for this year's artwork. So I photographed each piece of artwork and will have a little book made to save space.




Elsa spent most of the day in this box.

Overlooking the real joy of October...

October rolls around and everyone gets weak in the knees for all the fall colors and the crisp air and pumpkin patches and picking apples and eating all things pumpkin and drinking hot apple cider and making soup and jumping in leaves etc etc.

But the best part of October is often overlooked...the availability of this:



Most stores only carry Count Chocula seasonally and we loaded up this weekend. Although, I must say that it is not quite as chocolatey as it used to be.


Elsa is caught dumping out the box of Franken Berry and sneaking into the Count Chocula.

From Wikipedia: Franken Berry was very popular when first introduced possibly because the initial batches of the cereal used a dye that didn't break down in the body, causing many children's feces to be bright pink, a symptom sometimes referred to as "Frankenberry Stool."

How to spend a rainy weekend...

This past weekend it rained. And it was cold. For the most part, we stayed inside. We did attempt an ill-fated trip to Costco on Saturday...never a good idea. But on Friday we decided to venture out in the rain and cold and go to the zoo. It had been far too long since we had been there and a rainy day is always good for avoiding crowds. Elsa was finally old enough to really enjoy watching all the animals.




My camera was all fogged up in the butterfly house.


Baby gorilla. Adorable.








Ben and Amelia spent much of Saturday in their pajamas watching music videos directed by Spike Jonze.


Captivated by internet videos. Amelia wore her witch costume most of the weekend.


Making and eating delicious cheesy potato soup and rolls.


Making cookies.


We watched some friends Monday night and they had fun decorating Halloween cookies.


Listening to Ben tell a ghost story...

GERMANY (Neuschwanstein Castle)

We spent the rainy afternoon hiking up to the Neuschwanstein Castle and enjoying the views and a tour of the interior. Photos weren't allowed inside, but it was incredibly elaborate and quite amazing. The views from the castle were incredible, even though they were somewhat obstructed by the cloudy day.


This was the Hohenschwangau Castle, also located in the same area.


We filled up on bratwurst before beginning the hike to the castle.
















A view of the Hohenschwangau Castle.




After our tour, we hiked over to this bridge and had some great views of the castle.




It was incredibly windy on the bridge. And freezing.




We warmed up with some hot cocoa and the most amazing hot cream cheese donuts.


Our Bavarian feast that night...the perfect way to end a rainy day. We topped it all off with some apple strudel.


I took this picture while waiting in the jetway to board our flight home...Ben was already comfortably seated in his massage chair in Business Class enjoying a beverage.

GERMANY (Hohenschwangau: Hotel Alpenstuben)

We took a scenic route through Austria (okay, every route was scenic) to get to our final destination, the Neuschwanstein Castle in Hohenschwangau.

We managed to avoid rain up until our last day. Despite the rain, it was still a beautiful drive.









They gave us our choice of rooms in the hotel and we ended up with a room that had two balconies with a great view of the castle.

The views from our balcony: