Sister weekend

As I mentioned, Laura came up for the weekend!!  We packed as much as we could into the little weekend with 100% fun and 0% studying.  Luckily for me, almost all of my classes  are canceled this week because three different professors happened to go on vacation at the same time, so I have time this week to get things done.

Laura arrived on Friday night, and we ran a 5k race on Saturday morning around Purdue’s campus.  As much as we were not looking forward to the race on Friday night, we were both happy afterward!  We hung out after the race long enough to enjoy the atmosphere and the sweet mash-ups blaring from the speakers.  The music selection was fantastic–they played The Wobble a few minutes before we started, and I wobbled my way to the start line.  We also got to see the first half marathoner FLY in.  Amazing!

When we got back to my apartment, it was only like 9:45am (that’s another good thing about 5k races…you feel productive but have the whole rest of the day left), so we drank coffee with pumpkin creamer and watched Netflix.  We searched high and low for Halloween specials, but most of the “Halloween” section was horror movies, and I can’t handle scary things.
—Random side note about my experience with haunted houses—
1. When I was 8(?), I got lost in a fun house.  I sat down and cried for a while until a nice family led me out.
2. When I was in 15, I went to a haunted house with a group of friends.  While we were waiting outside of the haunted house, I saw a clown with a chainsaw approaching our group.  No one else seemed concerned, but I high-tailed it out of there (probably my fastest run, to date), knocking my teeny little 90-pound friend down to the ground in the process and ripping a giant hole in the knee of my jeans.  Needless to say, I drank hot chocolate around the bonfire with my friend’s dad instead of going into the haunted house.
3. When I was 16, I went to a haunted house with a different group of friends, convinced I was braver.  A guy in a mask jumped out at me, and I reflexively yanked his mask off.  There was a normal, very confused, person behind that mask.  Surprise!

So to celebrate Halloween, I like to do happy fall things in the daylight…like pumpkin patches.
Laura and I met up with Andrea at school to participate in her research study, so we sat in neighboring sound booths for an hour and identified fricatives.  What fun!  Then Andrea joined us for lunch (Potbelly) and to the pumpkin patch.  It was cold and rainy, but we wanted pumpkins, so we were willing to get wet and frizzy.

We hadn’t been to this barn/orchard/pumpkin patch before, but it was pretty cool.  There was a wedding going on, so we got see the bride and wedding party!!…taking pictures in the drizzly rain.  Inside the barn, there were crates of apples and tables of honey and jams, and two itty bitty pumpkins.  We picked out two bags of apples and then trampled our way through the muddy pumpkin field with a pair of shears in search of Andrea’s perfect 12-lb pumpkin.

Then Laura and I vegged for a bit, went to dinner (Panera), and saw The Maze Runner at the movie theater.  I’m a big dystopian fan, so I really enjoyed the movie.  It was a lot more intense than I thought it would be–crazy actiony, and I almost had 20 heart attacks–and now I want to read the book!  Has anyone read it?  Some parts weren’t explained very well in the movie, so I’m curious if the book has more background info.

The next day, we went to church, went to lunch with some church friends, and then went to my favorite froyo place.  We weren’t hungry, but it was our last hurrah of the weekend, so we went all out.

A perfect sister weekend!

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Any good haunted house stories?
Do you have a pumpkin? Did you carve it?