Kosior First Annual Fall Fun Festival

This weekend, the General and I sponsored the First Annual Kosior Fall Fun Festival. It was been such a loooooooooooooooooooooooong summer, and now that the weather has finally cooled off, it actually feels like fall, and I wanted to celebrate. As it turned out, Judy, Joe, and Lucas were all free, so I invited them on down to the 'Burg for a fun autumn time.

The idea really came about with Joe, who sent me a link to a corn maze up north somewhere, asking me if I'd like to take a crack at it. I had been looking at the corn maze here in F'burg and wanted to do that, so I sent him another link and he agreed. When it worked out Judy didn't have to work, I invited her and Lucas along to come too.

Everyone arrived by train on Friday evening and were whisked off to my house for a big, healthy meal. I made chicken cutlets, cheesy orzo, green beans, and a salad. Judy provided a nice chocolate cake that looked like a pumpkin, plus Lucas provided Ben and Jerry's. We gave Lucas a grand tour of the house, since it was his first time here, and then I taught Joe how to sweat to the oldies, which I must admit, was kind of fun with a partner.

The next day, we all got up, I made a huge pancakes and bacon breakfast (I was determined no one was going home hungry) and Joe, Lucas, Judy and I headed out to the corn maze. It was freakin' awesome. They had three different paths through it, so we started with the easy level. Then we went into the medium level, but somehow when we finished, we came out on the hard level exit, and a bunch of farm dudes were standing around clapping for us that we had triumphantly defeated the corn maze. We were quite proud and accepted all applause with the glow of victors home from war.

We took a hayride out to the pumpkin fields and all of us got pumpkins to carve, which was pretty fun, and then we drank cider and ate kettle corn before heading back to the house. We were covered in mud. hehe

When we got home, Joe and I promptly passed out. I don't know what happened. I came to about 2 hours later. When I woke up, Joe was just waking up and Judy and Lucas were watching the Oregon Ducks football game. Joe and I looked up ghost walks for Fredericksburg and decided to attend the one put on by the Fred Preservation Society, out of UMW. I figured it'd been a while since we ate, so I started up the grill, Judy made homemade fries, I grilled hot dogs, and heated up lasagna for Joe and Lucas. I gave Joe a triple helping of lasagna and a chicken cutlet, and was very pleased to note that he ate it all--though he grumbled a bit at first. But let's face it: it's been a while since the boy had a decent meal.

After dinner, we went downtown to the ghost walk. The General wanted to stay home and watch the Red Sox pound the Rockies, and just as well, since the ghost walk was a bit of a bust.

The thing was all set up so that you would walk to different homes and businesses in town that were supposed to be haunted. At each stop, actors and actresses would pretend to be said ghosts. However, they didn't have enough male actors, so many prominent male figures in Fredericksburg were portrayed by women (including, most hilariously, James Monroe). The tours were backed up and we wound up skipping two stops, which sucked, but for $6, what can you do? Totally cornball, next year we're doing a real ghost tour.

We headed back across the river and went to Bottom Dollar to buy supplies for our campfire, which we had when we got home. I'm so glad I got that firepit earlier this year--we sparked that thing up good and used real firewood instead of a fire log. Once it was roaring, the General came out and we toasted smores. I tried to get a singalong started, but that didn't really pan out, so we just sat around, messed with the fire, burned things and laughed.

Sunday, Judy and I had to work on some book club stuff after breakfast (I made a magnificent applesauce caramel coffee cake) and then we all carved our pumpkins. There were 6 in all, one for each of us, plus a community pumpkin we dubbed the Picasso. The General was totally grossed out by pumpkin guts (he was gagging when he touched it, poor dear), so I wound up cleaning 3 pumpkins myself, but what the heck. The pumpkins came out AWESOME.

By then, it was about time to head north and bring everyone home. We listened to old time radio on the way back, and sparked Joe and Judy's pumpkins and listened in the dark to a couple of creepy stories on The Big Broadcast. We all went to bed early.

It was such a fun weekend of simple pleasures, things I haven't done in some time, like carving pumpkins and going on a hay ride. It was so nice to be surrounded by people I love and doing things together, I must say, my favorite part was the campfire, all of us out there, just being together and having fun.

There's a photo gallery at www.mkosior.com/gallery/fallfun with pictures of the whole thing, except the ghost tour. Enjoy!