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time for the cutest season of all, awwwwtumn

Saturday, October 19, 2024

For Mike's birthday gift we decided to plan a little trip to Upstate NY to see his family and do some fall festivities.

When we arrived at the Rochester airport, Mike's parents picked us up and we drove straight to Mike's brothers house in Utica. We got to see our 1 year old nephew Milo almost the whole weekend, which was super special!

After some shut eye, we woke up early the next day to continue driving to Old Forge in upstate NY, where we spent the day visiting the beautiful autumn leaves. First stop was at Inlet for some delicious donuts from Mary's White Pine Bakery-

We took a little stroll on the dock at the park nearby as well.

Next stop was a little family friendly hike on Rocky Mountain, where we were greeted in the parking lot by a cute little deer!

The hike was a pretty easy one, with lovely weather, and lots of other hikers with dogs on the pathway to keep me going.

We did finally reach the top, and the view was really spectacular. The autumn trees glistened in the Fall sunshine.

Once you get to the top, you of course have to then climb back down again.

We worked up an appetite by now, so we grabbed some food in town before heading back to Brockport for the night. The next day was Fall Festivity Extraordinaire. We started our morning at Blodgett Family Farm, where we picked out all the pumpkins we WOULD be taking home with us if the airplane would allow it.

They had some goats and donkeys to feed!

Next we made some quick pit stops to Zarpentine's Farms-

and Kellys, where took a donut and cider break.

Our final stop on Tour De Fall was to the Hilton Apple Fest. This was indeed a very, very popular festival, and we took some time walking around visiting the stalls.

On our way back home, Jimmy Z's, who catered our wedding, is going out of business, so we had to stop for one final garbage plate.

With everyone together, we had a big family Thanksgiving meal! It was so lovely to get to hang out with everyone, especially as the kids are getting older and growing up so quickly!

We really enjoyed our family time, however, we kind of got thrown into a ringer right as we got home. Hurricane Milton came quickly into Florida, and we only had a few days to prepare the house for the storm. Luckily I was able to work from home all week, and SeaWorld (as did most things) closed Wednesday and Thursday. We got some sandbags from the county at 5am before they were all gone.

We tried to put as much in the garage as possible, and hoped for the best as we rode out the storm from our new home.

We brought in all our things and barricaded the backdoor we knew leaked a bit in preperation.

Thankfully everything was ok, and no major damage. We lost our papaya tree into our neighbors yard, and small fence pieces but all superficial and mostly fixable things. We lost power at about 3am til 2pm, but luckily was a nice breezy and cool day. Overall, did not love having a hurricane as a homeowner, and don't want to experience again, but we know where we live and can only always be prepared.

Our poor papaya tree...

Not long after the hurricane, I was back in New York briefly. I was hired onto a production for Norwegian Cruise Line as the Talent Production Assistant. I was flown out to NYC for the fitting day, where I got to check in on my old stomping grounds for a day.

We had our clothing fittings for our cast and I ran some errands for things we needed before we boarded our cruise ship.

After a long day, we headed to our hotel in Brooklyn to stay the night before gathering everyone together to bus to the ship. The ship we spent the 3 days on was the Norwegian Joy, and it was an empty of guests ship, so it was just us and the ship crew on board. This was a totally different experience because most everything was not open onboard, however, it did make taking the elevator a lot easier.

Our staterooms were nice, and we were lucky enough to have balconies.

Our meals were at certain scheduled, one hour time slots, and it was buffet style in Cagny's Steakhouse. They were pretty good, but I was a little bummed I didn't get to have the ships restaurants options.

We were pretty busy the entire time we were on board, with my days mostly running from about 5am til 6pm or sometimes even later. The boat left NYC and headed to it's final destination, Miami, and it was a pretty rocky trip.