A Fun-filled Fall Friday

Today was an awesome fun-filled fall Friday.  Weber and I both took a "mental health" day, which translates to he took a personal day off from school and I did not teach my normal Friday knitting class. We have been planning this day for a month or so.  Our schedule has been such that we haven't had any time to just have fun together.  Our plan was to go to the Dallas Arboretum to see the Chihuly exhibit.  First though, we dropped the car off to have its oil changed and state inspection done.  (It was only two days late.)  We went and had a nice breakfast at a local cafe while we waited for the car.

The Chihuly exhibit has been at the Arboretum since May and was scheduled to close this weekend.  We have been talking about going since May and never made it.  The day after we planned our day off, the Arboretum announced that the exhibit would be extended through the end of the year.  We decided that we'd stick with our plans for today anyway, thinking that it might not be as crowded on a week day.  We were wrong about that but that's OK.

As excited as I was to see all of the glass sculptures, I was even more excited to take pictures.  The Arboretum is a photographer's dream come true - lots of colors, textures, changing lighting, and people.  We were there a couple of hours and I took slightly more than two hundred pictures.  Needless to say, some of them met the "delete" button without a second glance.  I sure am glad for digital photography.  If I were still using film this would be an expensive hobby!

When I got home and realized just how many images I had, I decided to break my Arboretum post into two parts - general pictures and Chihuly pictures.  Today you get the general pictures.

I love fall.  Seeing the Arboretum at this time of year reminds me why.  I love the yellows and oranges of the fall flowers.  I also love that many of the pathways and beds were lined with pumpkins.  I have never seen so many pumpkins in one place.  And then there were all the other gourds . . . It was beautiful.

This was the sight right inside the gate.

Once I saw this, I knew I was in picture-taking paradise!

I loved all the pumpkins along the pathways and around so many of the flower beds.

All of the colors are amazing.

About ten percent of the pictures that I took today were attempts to get a good shot of this butterfly.  Technically I know how my camera should be set to achieve this goal.  Its just that the butterfly moved faster than my brain and my hands.  I was always one setting behind his )or her) next move.

I wish that I had done better at this but this is the best shot I got.

I am always a sucker for a picture of a pretty tree.  Here is the second in my series of bois d'arc trees.  I don't know why I am so enamored with these trees, but I am.

And who can resist flowers and bugs?

This cute little boy was visiting the Arboretum with his grandmother.  He seemed to be having a grand time.    I wonder what his parents were thinking when they named him with the initials "EAT"?

Perhaps he was heading here for a rest and a snack.

All of the colors and textures of the gourds are just beautiful!

Tomorrow I will share my favorite images of the Chihuly glass sculptures.

After our trip to the arboretum, Weber had enough time to go early vote before we left again to attend a Taize service for which I was playing.  I am happy to report that this time he was able to vote and happily cancelled out the vote of the guy in the Mercedes who cut him off in the parking lot the other day.

Our evening ended with a wonderful Italian meal with a dear friend of ours.  So there you have it, our fun-filled fall Friday.

I hope you all had a good day.