Second Half of November

Dan's boss was out of town the week of Thanksgiving so he offered us his UVA basketball tickets. We had a fun time, despite getting there super late. And UVA stomped the other team into the ground so hard that you felt sorry for them. Eli was in awe the whole time. Or he was just perplexed. It was noisy in there.

The next day we played at Grandma and Grandpa's house while Dan worked. Thursday was Thanksgiving. Dad decided to try deep-frying the turkey. That was quite exciting and scary. You can hear that oil sizzling like crazy.

It was delicious.

Yes, I wore my festive harvest sweater for the occasion. We took a nice walk after dinner and then, at night, Dan continued his tradition of Thanksgiving night shopping at Walmart. It was pretty peaceful this year - not too crazy. We hit it up on our way to Old Rag. Mom and Dad kindly watched our kids so we could do this hike.

As I said, we left at night and got to the parking area around 9. There was only one other car in the huge parking lot. We started hiking and went until almost midnight. We saw a skunk, a little owl, and lots of crickets. We got as far as we could before coming to the "Backcountry camping prohibited beyond this point" sign. We picked a spot and slept in our sleeping bags under the stars (no tent). I'd never done that before. It was cold. We both have mummy bags, so it was mostly just my face that was cold. If I'm going to do that again, I need to get a ski mask.

We wanted to be there for the sunrise, so we woke up around 5 and saw some lights of others on the trail in the distance. We packed up and started again. It was hard in the dark because right at that point is where the boulders start. We quickly caught up to the people with the lights - turns out it was two teenage marines who were using their cell phones to light the way and could no longer find the trail. So we stayed with them and led them through to the top. We didn't end up seeing the sunrise because it was cloudy. And more clouds quickly rolled in. But it was pretty (and COLD!) while it lasted.

 I took this picture of the people on the rock across from us.

 So then she took one of us.

Pretty cool! The hike down was a lot easier and it started to warm up.

My attempt at a long-exposure shot.

We started seeing TONS of people hiking and when we got back to the parking lot, it, and the other overflow parking lot, were totally crazy. There were at least 100 other cars there, so I'm glad we did things like we did! We had the top pretty much to ourselves (just two other groups) so we had a great view and then we got home early enough to do some other things.

We went with my mom to the Green Valley book fair which was great for children's books. Then we celebrated Dan's birthday with my parents, who wouldn't be able to come on his actual day.

We had a really nice Thanksgiving break.

Our TV picture was messed up so Dan researched it and tried to fix the TV on his own. Didn't work. Broke the TV. Bought a new one on Saturday to get the Black Friday deals. Now the old one is sitting in our living room...

And lastly, we played in the leaves.