Hooray for Fall!

Fall is by far my favorite time of year and I am SO excited that it is finally here! Fall means a lot of different things to people but to me it means cooler weather, pretty autumn leaves, carving pumpkins for Halloween, eating LOTS of candy corn (the baby likes sugar, what can I say!) college football of course, and it also means the holidays are just around the corner.

Although I am a Carolina girl (South Carolina that is) Ayden's love for Wofford College football means that we spend a lot of our Saturday's during the fall in Spartanburg, SC cheering on the Terriers. This past weekend Wofford played Furman and not only did they win, but we had a great time tailgating and hanging outside enjoying the beautiful fall weather!

Jenks, Jessica and us before the game



Wofford's new scoreboard (Ayden will proudly tell you that it is one of the biggest in college football, even bigger than Tennessee's).


Ayden, Dr. Mark and Jenks


Another thing I love about fall are all the yummy recipes (mainly desserts) that involve pumpkin. This weekend I made Pumpkin Chocolate Walnut Cookies for the game and they were a big hit so I wanted to pass along this easy recipe:

1 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tspn ground cinnamon
2 tspn baking powder
1/2 tspn salt
1 tspn baking soda
1 tspn nilk
1 tbspn vanilla extract
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil and egg. In a separate bowl stir flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Dissolve baking soda with milk and stir in. Add flour mix to pumpkin mix and mix well. Add vanilla and chocolate chips (and nuts if you choose). Drop by spoonful on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes or until lightly brown and firm. This mix will make a lot of cookies (I made around 3 dozen) so make sure you have someone to share them with so you aren't tempted to eat them all yourself!!