You know it's turning fall...

When it's time for Jacsyn's bday party.
When you wear shorts to the mountains, but have to put on your jacket before the sun goes down.
When the trees start to explode and you remember why you love the color red.
When the smell of pumpkin candles fill the house (especially when you leave the candle warm plate on all night like I did last night).

Saturday, we went to Jacsyn's bday party in Statesville. (Stef says it's the one time a year that she gets all friends and family who live in Lenoir to come to Statesville.)

Hannah Montana theme for the bday party!

Big girl is five years old!!

This afternoon, we headed to downtown Lenoir to find some old brick buildings for picture backdrops. Not much luck, as the sun was beaming down on the best locations. Will have to go back later in the evening.

We headed to a small church in Happy Valley. Brian used my camera and I used our neighbor's camera to take some pics of J and O. I have got to take a class to learn how to use my flippin' camera. I get so frustrated- I feel like I can never get the lighting or exposure right... Then I try to fix it in Photoshop, but I barely know how to use that either.

The bluish-toned pics were edited in Picasa only. Should have tried to fix those in Photoshop, but I'm too lazy tonight.

My favorite of the day.

Inside the church.
It was dark, and I was trying to use manual and no flash.
Hence the dark photo.

Jake was making O laugh.

After taking some pics, we explored the old graveyard. Jake was a bit spooked at first, but he became interested a little more once we started reading tombstones from the late 1800's.

After leaving the church, we headed up to Blowing Rock. We were going to try to do some pics up there, but decided to head on to dinner at Outback. Left dinner with our jackets on and headed home.

Welcome autumn.