i forgot about october.

so, in case you missed it {like i feel like i did} today is october 28th, meaning it's almost november. what the heck? october is usually my favorite month of the whole entire year, it being my birth month and all, but this year, i guess life has kinda rushed by and i didn't really get to enjoy october. i'm really just trying to keep my head above water with school stuff.

that's not to say that i didn't do fun things in october, because i did. and i have proof!

as is tradition, we went to utc's homecoming game and tailgated with austin's fraternity brothers. katie and lindsy both came into town and lindsy's friend ashley came to play, too.

and taylor came to hang out, as well.

and i just really want to share this picture. because it absolutely cracks me up.

obviously, whatever is happening in the foreground is quite humorous, but please note the pasta salad taylor and austin are pretending to have nothing to do with as it is all over the ground...

anyway.

for my birthday, the heards took me out to eat at one of my {and my momma's} favorite places- macaroni grill! i stuffed myself with breads and pastas and cheese, like always. and topped it all off with cheesecake, naturally. i only wish momma could have been there to enjoy it, too!

lucky for me, school thought we should be on fall break for my birthday, so i didn't even have to go to class. instead i got to stay home and cuddle with my puppy. and it's always fun to get cards in the mail on your birthday. like this one, from kasey.

after austin got home from work, i got to open my present from him- new boots! juliet helped, cause she's nice like that.

one of the best parts about having my birthday in october is that momma's birthday is just a few days after mine. of course, it would be much better if we were able to share some cake together.

i love you, momma! and i hope you had a good birthday!

last weekend, ben came over to carve some pumpkins with us, since our first attempts didn't last too long.

i think they all turned out awesome.

here they are up close and all lit up.

so that's about it for october. and i know it's not quite over yet, but just about. and austin and i have no plans for halloween happenings, other than handing out candy to the kids. we might dress up for that, but we might not. i'm also struggling through either a cold or strep or some other terrible illness that's making me suffer, so currently i have no voice. so... that's awesome.

oh, and one last thing. i have a new friend you need to meet.

this is baby kitty. baby kitty lives on/around our porch {but not for long} and likes to cuddle with me. as soon as baby kitty can get an appointment with the vet, juliet and dinger will get to meet baby kitty. and they will all love each other. and it will be super.

and i may or may not be turning in to this girl:

"... and their ears, and the whiskers, and the nose..."

whatever. i'm not ashamed.

maybe i'll have some things to post about halloweenie things. maybe not. and i'll leave you with that suspense.

weekend things.

so i told you we had lots of plans for the weekend. and i promised lots of pictures of said plans. well, i kinda failed. but whatev. i do what i want.

first, i need to give a little update on our beautiful pumpkins. so remember my awesome cat pumpkin and austin's creepy smiling pumpkin?

yeah. well a mere two days after we put them on the porch, things fell apart. my cat began caving in... and molding. yuck. this is what it looks like now, just a short week after carving it.

but austin's actually looks really funny. the creepy smile has now begun to cave in on itself, making the pumpkin look like a grandma pumpkin who has no teeth. it makes me laugh.

please note that even though they are both molding and collapsing, we still have them on the porch. my pumpkin even fell over on its back so you can't even see that it was carved, yet its still hanging out on the porch. oh well.

i also wanted to share that austin's pumpkin had a safe ride down to our house from the mountain. buckle up, for love, buckle up {i still sing this song all the time, mom}.

anyway, back to this weekend. saturday night we all went to austin's cousin's wedding up on signal mountain. the wedding was gorgeous and i absolutely loved the bride's dress. of course, i suck and got ze.ro. pictures of the bride, groom, ceremony or the reception or any of us at either of those. i did, however, force austin to take a picture with me once we got home before we both changed out of our fancy-schmancy clothes.

on sunday i attended a bridal shower for bride-to-be brianne. the set-up of all the food was picture perfect! bri's maid of honor, amy, did a great job of setting up everything.

and check out the pretty little framed monogram that amy {and her husband} put together for brianne! i absolutely love it and am adding it to my list of things to make. 

we all said we should take a picture and pin it on pinterest. but we were joking. because it would be silly to go out of our way to add something to pinterest just so we could pin it. i mean, at least kind of joking. cause i'm probably going to do it.

and now here's little miss bri herself opening some gifts.

amy included little recipe cards for us to share our favorite recipes with brianne. super cute!

we had a great time and i got to meet sarah's little boy for the first time. he's super cute and was so good hanging out with all us girls. and let's just be honest, we really spent most of the time gossiping just chatting and catching up with each other. oh and playing with the baby. bri's wedding is getting so close and i know we're all super excited and happy and anxious for her big day to get here!

so there, i kinda halfway came through on my promise of weekend pictures. but not really. what can you do?

and for anyone's who's wondering, why yes, my birthday is one week from today.

just saying.

pumpkins and potatoes.

in order to get the month of october started off right, austin and i headed up to steve and gloria's house to carve pumpkins last weekend.

austin and taylor working hard. with the help of bailey and juliet.

bailey ate all the pumpkin she possibly could.

while juliet just relaxed in the sunshine.

taylor's pumpkin.

and austin's.

and mine!

after carving, taylor busted out the potato gun. just for fun.

step one: hammer the potato into the gun.

step two: add hair spray.

step three: test the direction of the wind by throwing grass into the air.

step four: aim and fire.

step five: run away from flying potato and/or potato bits {not pictured. because i was running and hiding}

everyone got to try.

after that, austin and i went to watch the utc game against the citadel {and that's all i'm going to say about that. because i'm embarrassed for us}.

and when we got home, we put our pumpkins on the front porch and lit 'em up.

neat-o, i know.

on a somewhat related fall-season note, check out the pretty mums austin bought me for the porch.

and on an austin-related note, he had appointments with his kidney doctor and the cardiac people this week and received lots of good news. his electrolyte levels are staying at a good-for-him level {even though they'd be considered quite low for a "normal" person}. his incision site is healing well. and his defibrillator is working properly {they had to test it, but he hasn't actually needed it at all! yay!}. he's been cleared of pacemaker precautions, which means he's back to zero limitations about movement of his arm/how much weight he can hold/etc. he just has to avoid holding large magnets to his chest. which i think we can handle. all good news!

and, well, that's about it, for now. we've got lots of plans this weekend, including a ton of studying for me. but hopefully i'll have some pictures/fun things to share from the weekend activities. no guarantees though.