Fall Fun List Archives - Laura Vanderkam https://lauravanderkam.com/tag/fall-fun-list/ Writer, Author, Speaker Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:33:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 https://lauravanderkam.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/cropped-site-icon-2-32x32.png Fall Fun List Archives - Laura Vanderkam https://lauravanderkam.com/tag/fall-fun-list/ 32 32 145501903 First freeze last night — here’s how I did on the Fall Fun List https://lauravanderkam.com/2024/11/first-freeze-last-night-heres-how-i-did-on-the-fall-fun-list/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2024/11/first-freeze-last-night-heres-how-i-did-on-the-fall-fun-list/#comments Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:33:26 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=19802 The temperatures dropped last night, and the trees are definitely looking bare. I think last weekend was the last really colorful one. On to winter!

Back in September, I posted my 2024 Fall Fun List — a list of things I wanted to do to enjoy this fleeting season. Here’s an update on how I did.

Visit New England twice. I did! I went to a work-related gathering in Portland, Maine in early fall, and had a lovely run along the water and saw the northern lights. Then in mid/late October my husband and I went to Mount Desert Island in Maine. We stayed in Bar Harbor, hiked through Acadia, ate lobster, and ran the Run MDI half marathon. Lots of beautiful fall scenery there too.

Run long. I finished the half marathon, though it was fairly painful. I have not been motivated to run long since then! But I did do several longer runs during my training on a local nature trail, and those were quite nice.

Bike. I did bike solo a few times on a trail near here. We did not go as a family, despite buying another big kid bike (it has yet to be used). However I have been biking around the driveway with my 4-year-old! BOBW listeners have heard my ad about the Guardian Bike, and he has definitely figured it out. He asked if he could ride his own bike during a family bike ride — we shall see, as the trails are a little scary sometimes, but he could absolutely go on the Tag-along behind me. Of course, now it’s going to be cold for the next four months but…eventually.

Hike. My husband and I did the Gorham Mountain trail in Acadia, so I think this counts. My friend Joy and I have walked on local trails several times too.

Visit a botanical garden. I did do a lunch time picnic at Stoneleigh, and I went to Chanticleer several times, usually on Friday mid-day. When I created my “realistic ideal week” at BLP Live, I tentatively put in that Friday around lunch could be my “little adventure” time for doing things like this. There should be upsides to self employment!

Go apple picking. Wow, this seems like ages ago, though it was just mid/late September. We bought 3 pecks of honeycrisp apples at a local place. There was a lot of whining as it was a hot day, but we did it. And we ate through all our apples. I think we’ll go somewhere less crowded next year.

Watch a football game. Just snippets here and there on TV. I have family members going to a real one over Thanksgiving, but not me. Oh well.

Take family photos. We did, in a studio in late September. I now have the proofs and they are lovely (well, mostly – I don’t like viewing myself from some angles!). I’m not allowed to show random family photos anymore with older kids, but I’m happy to have these.

Enjoy BLP Live. I did! I love the beach and it was a great gathering. This will probably become a late fall tradition.

Listen to Vivaldi’s “Autumn.” Yep, and wrote several autumn-themed sonnets. I am thinking I might actually continue my 2-lines-a-day sonnet writing habit for another year. It’s pretty easy to do, and the discipline of writing sonnets weekly means occasionally I write one I like.

I’m now working on my holiday fun list, so stay tuned for that! If you made a fall fun list, how did you do?

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The 2022 Fall Fun List https://lauravanderkam.com/2022/09/the-2022-fall-fun-list/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2022/09/the-2022-fall-fun-list/#comments Fri, 09 Sep 2022 01:39:29 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=18745 There is something gratuitously glorious about fall in places full of deciduous trees. Spring flowers make sense — attracting pollinators and the like. But fall color feels like more of a bonus.

Of course there is more to fall than simply peak October leaves. In my part of Pennsylvania, September is something of a bridge month, technically late summer most of the time, but feeling different, with the light slanting and the overgrown green mottling around the edges. November is one of my favorite months of the year. It starts with blazing red maples, travels through the harvest themes of Thanksgiving, and ends with the coming coziness of the holidays.

Anyway, all that is to say that fall deserves its own seasonal fun list. So here it is — the things I want to do to really appreciate this season!

Go to Maine. A work trip to Portland – one of the cutest cities ever. Lobster must be consumed at some point. In September in Maine, there’s already a nip of fall in the evening and early morning air.

Run a half marathon. Fall is for distance running and I have a race coming up soon. I’m not as trained as I’d like. I never am. But I have done two 10-milers and two 8-milers and so it could be worse.

See the bird migration. We could visit either Cape May or Hawk Mountain — both have some fantastic bird watching in early fall.

Take a leaf peeping trip. We’re planning to go visit my brother in upstate New York for a weekend. We went for his wedding last year and had such a wonderful time. In future years I’d like to make a Vermont/New Hampshire type trip during the peak foliage season. There are some road routes that are known for being fabulous.

Go on a fall hike. Closer to home perhaps, but I want to get the kids out for some long walks in pretty leaves.

Go to a Halloween-themed event. We will go to at least one “Boo at the Zoo” type extravaganza — maybe that or a theme park Halloween fest. My 12-year-old wore his inflatable T-rex costume to the zoo last year and the cheetahs were totally tracking him and eyeing him as a threat!

Drink apple cider/go apple picking. So we already went apple picking once (to get Honeycrisps while they are ripe!) but I’m happy to go again. I’m sure I can find some sort of Cider Fest around here and make a day of it.

Listen to fall-themed music. Listening to Appalachian Spring was such a cool part of that season this year and so I’d like to pick a seasonally appropriate classical work and get to know it well. But what should that be? Other than Vivaldi’s Four Seasons I’m not sure!

Take family photos. This isn’t always “fun” per se in the moment, but I’m happy to have them, and peak fall leaves is a good time (they make pretty Christmas cards).

Celebrate the launch of Tranquility by Tuesday! I just started my official pre-order campaign. Order before October 11 and you’ll get an early excerpt, a TBT Scorecard so you can track how you’re doing on the rules, an invite to a Zoom book discussion in October and early access to my TBT In Real Life videos. If you pre-order just fill out the forms on this page to get the bonuses. Thank you!

What’s on your fall fun list?

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The leaves are falling — here’s how we did on the Fall Fun List https://lauravanderkam.com/2021/11/the-leaves-are-falling-heres-how-we-did-on-the-fall-fun-list/ https://lauravanderkam.com/2021/11/the-leaves-are-falling-heres-how-we-did-on-the-fall-fun-list/#comments Mon, 08 Nov 2021 14:37:31 +0000 https://lauravanderkam.com/?p=18257 This past weekend may have been the last of the peak fall color. The weather has turned cold for sure, with night time lows flirting with freezing. The kids have pulled out their winter coats, and the leaves are falling fast and furious.

So we’re settling into wintering. It was an appropriate time for the All Saints service I sang in this weekend. I had mentioned another song in my Friday post, but in my worry about that tricky second soprano section, I forgot to report the truly cool part of the service: We performed the world premiere of a David Bennett Thomas setting of Psalm 121. He came to listen to it. Performing a choral work for the first time, and seeing a composer hear his work performed in person for the first time, is an experience you don’t get too often in a lifetime. So I tried to pause and notice and appreciate that.

Because it was not exactly the world’s most relaxing weekend. One kid had a Boy Scout camping trip in New Jersey, which meant my husband was driving him around both mornings, and I was shuttling kids to other things, plus getting out of the house for showings and an open house. We did family photos, which will be beautiful, but involved a lot of toddler shenanigans. The toddler also had a major sleep regression over the past few days, taking hours to settle at night and last night he was awake for an hour in the middle of the night.

Anyway, since the leaves are falling, I thought I’d go ahead and report how I did on the 2021 Fall Fun List.

Visit the beach. Done! I went to Cape May for my 2-day editing retreat. I was a bit ahead of the peak fall color, but it was beautiful nonetheless. I walked around the state park by the light house and saw an eagle perched at the top of a tree.

Go to Hawk Mountain. We went hiking a few weekends ago, and saw many gorgeous fall vistas (though, alas, not any hawks). This took some squeezing in with all the kids’ sports, but I was very glad we went.

Do fall puzzles. Well, I did most of one. (White Mountain’s 1000-piece Friends in Autumn) I got stuck with about 150 pieces of blue sky to go. Then I needed to either move or disassemble it for showings and I decided to go with the latter. Oh well.

Enjoy some fall-themed art. I found a lovely fall village scene in the Suzanne Valadon exhibit at the Barnes, which (if I remember correctly) she painted while visiting her much younger husband while he was recuperating from war wounds. I had been on the hunt for fall children’s books, and I can report that Fletcher and the Falling Leaves is a real winner — especially the moment of wonder on the last page.

Take a family bike ride. We did!

Do the family photo shoot and print up some photos. We took the photos. I will work on printing some up soon. I have been snapping a great many photos, including the one illustrating this post. Fall fading light is just spectacular. Even in the parking lot at my kid’s tennis lesson!

Do some morning runs. I did a few and they were great, such as on the beach at sunrise in Cape May. Now that I’m thinking about it, I also ran a half marathon in September, and did two AM long trail runs with Jane. I was thinking I wasn’t doing good on this one because I’m not running at 6:30 a.m. on Tuesdays (close to impossible with the current kid school schedule) but I should probably give myself a bit more credit here.

Decorate with mums. We did buy a few to make our house look nicer. But the key part of this Fall Fun List entry was to also learn the names of several fall-blooming wildflowers, which I did! There is white snakeroot (clouds of it everywhere), goldenrod, pokeweed (that’s the one with the berries that look vaguely like little grapes in a vineyard…), Black-eyed Susans, and a wide variety of asters. So many asters. I can’t keep them all straight, so “asters” they are.

Go leaf-peeping in upstate New York. We did this when we went to my little brother’s wedding at his home not too far from New Paltz. We did a gorgeous fall hike at Lake Minnewaska, stayed at an adorable farm house, and picked apples as well. Taking a fall trip made me feel like we got a real fall, so this is a nudge to take a similar trip in future years (and hey, my brother will still be there, presumably, so we have a reason to visit!)

Procure adorable Halloween costumes plenty in advance. Well, everyone had Halloween costumes by Halloween. And they were cute. We did two Halloween events (Boo at the Zoo and went to Dutch Wonderland) and had fun trick-or-treating. So I’ll call that a win.

NaNoWriMo…? Nope. I did turn in my Tranquility by Tuesday manuscript at the end of October but I just can’t do the novel thing this month. Maybe 2022. Or a NaNoWriMo in February or something…

How was your fall?

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