Shaz by the Sea

Here are "the boys of fall".... not the boys mentioned in Kenny Chesney's song about football players -- but MY boys of fall. ;) We looked around for some fun fall related activities and we found an event at the Lawn on D in Boston. They had a kid friendly Pumpkin Patch event, and I think I mentioned that in a post a few weeks ago. It was FUN. Lots of activities for kids and adults - my kind of event!  We also took Caden and Conor to Lexington Center yesterday morning for some coffee, pumpkin bread, and foliage by the Lexington Battle Green . Here we all are playing in the leaves yesterday!  We also went to my godson Jared's first birthday party AND ventured into the city to visit Jordan and Chelsea's for the Patriots game. Here's a pic from their awesome roof-deck.  On a completely unrelated note, if you haven't seen the "muffins" skit on youtube, you have to stop everything and watch the ridiculousness ...

I first want to thank everyone for coming to our housewarming party on Saturday. The weather wasn't the best all last week/weekend, but it cooperated for a few of us to be outside a bit throughout the day. Both Jim and I feel that the housewarming party was successful. I personally had a blast and think many of our friends/family did, too. The party started around 4PM so for dinner I made some pulled pork and beans for the main course - and we also had tons of sides like cole slaw, potato salad, a cranberry/feta cheese green salad, hot dogs, and chili. I was aiming for more of a fall spread than a typical summer BBQ of burgers and dogs. Here's the spread. I took a pic of the pulled pork about an hour after I put it in the slow cooker. I made about 30 lbs, so three different pork shoulders about 10 lbs each. I covered them in spices, ginger ale, onion, garlic, and Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce from BJs. They cooked for almost 18 hours each (3 different crock pots). I also served...

It looks like I preliminary posted my blog about the fall season...so here's a follow up.   I say that because I now have a few pictures of my minimal fall decorations -- and we also just returned from Wilson Farms in Lexington to grab some fruit, fresh bread, and veggies. And boy was it PACKED. We started the morning with some homemade banana and chocolate chip pancakes. It was a simple recipe made from ingredients I always have on hand (egg, milk, flour, sugar, butter, bananas, chocolate chips). I made 8 pancakes - 4 for Daddy, 2 for C and C, and 2 for Mom! Then we played outside on the deck. It was really chilly this morning - so thankfully we had our sweaters nearby to toss on quick. In fact, it was so chilly, you could see your breath! Then we tried our very first [whole] apple. Of course we've had tons of apples before, but usually either mushed up in our homemade baby food last fall, or chopped up more recently. To be honest, we ar...