2nd Annual Fall Festival

I love fall. It's my favorite season.

But round these parts in India, the leaves are always green (unless they're covered by dust during the hot season), and just finally in the last couple of weeks the temperatures have "cooled" down to the upper 80s during the day and 75ish overnight lows. Needless to say, they don't have fall here.

As a sidenote, when I pulled out my fall decorations (brought over from America), I was trying to explain to our house helper, Shefali, what the fall season is. She didn't understand :)

So I still like to pretend it's fall sometimes, and my favorite way of doing that is our team fall festival! We started this tradition last year, and made it even better this year by adding a soup potluck dinner, so it was one of my favorite evenings of the year so far!

We kicked off the night with a soup potluck - I made Pioneer Woman's Perfect Potato soup, and it was perfect. Best potato soup I've ever had. You should make it.

Some of the other girls made creamy chicken and rice soup, and Bethany made creamy white chicken chili. The boys were in charge of picking up bread bowls from a local bakery :)

Dinner was delicious, followed by painting "pumpkins." I don't really know what they are, some sort of gourd I suppose.

Landon and Layla get a kick out of this, and everyone's creative juices come flowing out.

Of course with the World Series going on, the Royals were a popular muse for pumpkin designs.

 Finished pumpkins! Christina's mom happened to be in town visiting at the time, so she joined right in on the fun!

After pumpkin painting, it was time for fall desserts. We may have gone a little overboard...

Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, apple pie, no bake "spider" cookies, ghost bananas, and pumpkin dump cake. Yum yum yum.

We also made homemade pumpkin spice lattes and apple cider. Starbucks doesn't have anything on us!!

We ended the evening playing several games (I learned a new favorite game, Dominion!), and just having a good time together as we ate second and third helpings of dessert. It really felt like a crisp fall evening...with the air conditioner running, of course.

We're so blessed by a team that is really family to us. Any time spent with them is so special, and we love them all!

Not to mention they're such a good looking group :)