Bundle Up!

It has been uncharacteristically cold here in Omaha this past week and I'm LOVING it. There is that nice, crisp autumn briskness to the air that I look forward to every year. Fall is, hands down, my favorite season. To me fall is sitting by a fire in my cozy, chocolate brown sweater and sipping a cup of hot apple cider as the leaves slowly float to the ground around me. I always conveniently forget that all those gorgeous crimson and burnt orange leaves are going to have to be raked.

To be honest though, what I love the most is the clothes. All the cheesy summer clothes that always end up grimy after a sweltering hot day, are traded in for new duds that are effortlessly fabulous with an air of sophistication to them--that is, most clothes leave this impression except the sweaters with leaves and apples sewn on them. Ladies you know who you are, please stop wearing them. It is not necessary to attach felt leaves to you clothes to make them suitable for fall.

Back to the weather. The temperature has been dipping in the evening so in the spirit of Sage's book "Apple Tree Christmas," (Don't get me started on how it's possible to pick apples to hang on your CHRISTMAS tree) in which a terrible blizzard comes and the family that lives above a barn needs to bundle up the two girls and make a bed for them under the kitchen table next to the wood stove because it could drop to forty below, I too prepare the girls for the cold nights ahead in which I refuse to turn the heat on for. Yes, we will survive the frigid night the same way the Ansterburgs did except our nights will be in an actual house and not a barn...and it isn't quite a blizzard that we're experiencing...oh dear, I don't have a wood stove, just a gas fireplace and Sage might squash Clare if I lay them down together...however, I did rush out to buy them some thermal pajamas and I did make quite a show at bundling them up! That's right, for two nights we braved the cold until night three when the girls started waking up because of the constant chatter of their teeth and I was forced to turn the heat on. Well, maybe my great inspiration from "Apple Tree Christmas" will be to go pick apples with the girls this week and then bake dozens of apple pies in my wood stove...oh wait.