Football Season is the Second Greatest Season!!

(The first best is Christmas!--only 108 days away!)

So, Brian's mom was chastising me at dinner for being lax on blog posts, so here I am!

We had a very lovely weekend. I worked from home on Friday and spent some time in the afternoon bringing in all our "blowable" objects. No fear, though, as soon as the winds were safely under tropical storm force, Brian set the birdfeeder back up and all of our birds are happy! Mom, dad, Cal, and Clay came in Friday night and went to dinner at the Lonestar in Knightdale. Cal and I had a very yummy Portabella Steak Salad. The highlight of the dinner was when Brian looked over at the TV over the bar and saw Jim Cantore in Atlantic Beach. Not cool.

Fortunately, in K-town, all we had was a lot of rain and some wind. It was really a good event for us because everything is nice and green now. In Ocean, mom, dad, and Clay had no damage and only some high winds--they actually had very little rain from the whole storm.

Early Saturday morning, the five of us were up and at'em and en route to Boone. It was pouring rain from Raleigh->Winston; gorgeous and sunny up US-421; and chilly, cloudy, and sprinkly all day in Boone. No worries for the Apps, though, who polished off Jacksonville University 56-7. For those of you who don't know, Appalachian is undergoing a major stadium renovation and it is looking awesome!! The stadium won't be finished until next year, but the visitor's side is now finished and it's very cool. I snapped some pictures while we were there and I'll try to get them up later this week. Next weekend, App will be playing Bye and the following weekend they're going to be Harrisionburg, Va. to play JMU (which is a big-time-serious game in the world of FCS action). So, I'm actually going to be completely in town for the next two weekends. Crazy, huh?

We got back to Knightdale pretty late Saturday night, partially because we had an awesome supper at Ishi Japanese Restaurant in Winston-Salem. I had this totally banging Rainbow Roll and the Friendly Pyramid Roll (don't you just love the names of sushi rolls?!?). Anyway, the fish was super fresh and it was all very delicious. If you like sushi and you're ever in Winston-Salem, I highly recommend you check it out (if you have a sushi-phobe in your group, they also have yummy hibachi).

On Sunday, Family Samuels + 1 was back off to the east and Brian and I were off to church. We served as Eucharistic Ministers and found out that OLL has a new music director--a very accomplished guy, who has studied under Marie Claire Alain in Paris. It's pretty exciting; I think I may have to join the handbell choir, which I've kinda missed over the last few years. After church, we met up with Brian's parents at TGI Friday's for lunch. The food was good, but the service definitely left something to be desired...

We were back home for about 45 minutes after lunch and then headed out to meet Brian's dad and brother at Blinco's to watch the 4:15 NFL action. Normally, I prefer to watch football games from the awesomeness of my own couch and our HDTV, but today was a bit different because both the Browns and the Panthers were on for the late-afternoon games. The Browns' result wasn't too hot, but the Panthers totally rocked the house, winning the game on the last play.

I totally love football. It is seriously the greatest sport ever. It's so much fun to have games to go to on Saturdays and others to watch on Sunday and Monday nights!

In the world of fantasy football, I'm playing Brian tonight in the Road Geek league, so I'll report tomorrow on my victory :-)

Speaking of football--did you know that Brett Favre is out of retirement? Who knew?