Sextet of Singers: Rita and Clem visit--Avery's ,Danbury and Sleepy Hollow

My parents left town on a Tuesday morning and Rita and Clem arrived the same night. They got to experience tons of real life with us--soccer, activity days, preschool, gymnastics, doctor's appointments, Halloween costume making, etc, etc. On Saturday we filled the day up with a lot of fun.

After Andrew's soccer game we headed out. First stop, Avery's Beverages in New Britain--one of the oldest soda bottling companies in New England. It was fun touring the barn and choosing our soda flavors.

Crates of soda everywhere and tons of flavors to choose from.

Whit always makes the best faces!!

From there, we headed on west and stopped in Danbury. Clem went to college for 1 1/2 years at what is now Western Connecticut State University (before he moved on to Brooklyn College and BYU). He hadn't been back in 46ish years.

A lot of campus had changed but "Old Main" was still the same. It was a lot of fun watching him reminisce.

He even found the house where he rented out a room from an old Irish couple. His room was the one right behind him on the right. So cool!

From Danbury, we continued west toward the Hudson River Valley. Our main destination was the big pumpkin Blaze but we got there a few hours early and headed first to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Scary!

The cemetery was huge and beautiful and had probaby 8 or 9 letterboxes hidden throughout. It was only open for 1 more hour when we arrived, so we only managed to find 3. Plus we learned how many famous people are buried there--who knew? I only think of the headless horseman when I think of Sleepy Hollow.

Here's the bridge that goes with the tale of the headless horseman and Ichabod Crane. (not original to the cemetary of course but still fun).

After dinner, we headed to the Great Jack 'O Lantern BLAZE. So cool. Thousands of pumpins carved with many many different displays. We walked through and it took over an hour. Unfortunately something with our dinner must have been cooked in peanut oil or something and Mary felt sick to her stomach from the end of dinner til about 20 minutes into our tour. Lucky for her, she got it out of her system--unlucky for me, I got to walk through our tour carrying a bag of puke--good times.

All pumpkins--some real, some fake, all awesome.

Again, all pumpkins

I love these 2 shots below. The flash went off on the first and it just looks stupid. The 2nd is the same shot with no flash. Suddenly it looks amazing.