October at its best

I love Autumn! I even love the word "Autumn", but that's not really important for this post. What is important is that, despite a cool wind, it was a beautiful Autumn weekend, and we took advantage of that the best we could.

Marianne had a fieldtrip to a pumpkin patch on Friday (her first real fieldtrip, with a bus ride and sack lunch and everything!). Her outing included a hayride, which was a point of contention, because the girls have gotten shot down for hayrides a couple times this year. First there was George's wedding, when we missed the hayride because of bad timing on our part, and then last week we were supposed to have a God teens hayride event (if I haven't mentioned God teens yet, I'm sure I will before long), but it got rained out. Ruth was pretty upset to hear that Marianne was actually getting to go on a hayride, but she wasn't. With that in mind, we decided to make a family trip to a pumpkin patch on Saturday afternoon, and make sure the hayride happened.

There was a lot of drama getting there, including a five year old's tantrum over, well, we're still baffled by what it might have been over. But we persevered and good fun was had. We went to Roca Berry Farm, the same place we berry picked a couple months ago. For pumpkin season, they have haunted houses, and goats to pet and a corn maze. Way more stuff than we got to. Oh, and of course, they had a hay ride. We let the older girls each pick a pumpkin, and they went for nontraditional choices. Since we already had a couple standard pumpkins at home, that worked out well. Below you can see Meg climbing in pumpkins that were bigger than her, and most of the family on our return hayride with our pumpkins of choice.


On Sunday, Nathaniel suggested we take a family walk to the sunken gardens that aren't too far from our house. Far enough that it was a bit of a daunting idea. Nathaniel walked there with the girls one other time, but since I was in labor that day - I had Meg later that night - I had opted not to join them. This time, I pushed Meg in the stroller and we let the older girls take their razor scooters. Man! You can get some real exercise when the girls are on those things because they fly! It's all I can do to catch up to them when the stop at the corners to wait for me.

We made it to the gardens and wandered long enough for me to take a few pictures. Most of the flowering plants have been removed for the winter, but it's still a very pretty garden with fountains, pools, winding paths and statues.




Today I'm off to Sam's Club, which doesn't exactly continue my trend of enjoying the fall weather, but I'll make up for it by kicking the kids outside to play this afternoon. Maybe I can convince them that raking the leaves would be a fun activity!