Jack-o-lanterns

Happy Halloween, everyone! 

Lots of pictures will follow, after the day's events...

Back to the pumpkin patch

On a beautiful fall day last week, Silas' class went to the pumpkin patch (you can see last year's trip here).

Drew went along and dutifully took pictures for me.

These next two pictures melt my heart:

Silas and his best bud, J.  These two are thick as thieves this year.

With the pumpkin patch trip behind us, we are gearing up for Halloween.  The costume is done.  Now all we need to do is to carve the pumpkins.

The jack-o-lantern post

We finally carved our pumpkins!
Silas says: they are spooky... but funny spooky, not scary spooky.
I think he's right :)
Silas got to test drive his Halloween costume at preschool yesterday. The shell that Drew made looks fabulous. I took pictures and am so tempted to post them, but I think I'll wait until Sunday.

Have a happy spooky Halloween weekend!

The pumpkin post

Alas, the long awaited pumpkin post. The two pumpkins above are the fruits of our labor; our very own home-grown beauties. We'll come back to them. First, let's go back in time to the end of September. Our local farmers' market had a fall festival. The kids in our community all had fun painting and decorating pumpkins. Silas decided to go for a textured look and applied massive glops of paint. It's been almost a month and the thing is still not dry. And our porch, home to our little pumpkin masterpiece, has a multi-colored ring of craft paint on it.
Jump forward a few weeks: Silas and I decided it was time to harvest our pumpkins.
Proud of his pumpkin:
Firefighter Pumpkin, ready to put out any Halloween related fires:
And taking their rightful place next to the painted pumpkin:
We hope to carve them this weekend...
But that's not all! One more pumpkin joined our trio. Silas had his first school field trip...to the pumpkin patch. I went along, and I've gotta tell you, at first I thought it was going to be a disaster. He didn't like the 120 year old barn we stared off in (that's it in the background of the next picture). None of the other kids seemed to notice how spooky it was, but Silas sure did. He refused to jump in the hay with the other children, and I truly thought the field trip was going to be a bust.

But, I finally got him to detach from me long enough for him to run through the hay bale maze.
By the time the group went through the flower trails and the corn maze, he walked along with the other kids and more or less forgot about his parents' existence (for a good 5 minutes anyways).
He picked out a pumpkin,
And the school trip ended with the quintessential class shot. Awe.
That's about it, for now. I hope there are lots of pumpkins in your life too.

Halloween Preparedness Checklist

Trip to the pumpkin patch. check.
Turning a pumpkins into a jack-o-lantern. check.
Jack-o-lantern checklist added note: It was a family effort. Drew scooped out the stringy stuff and seeds and then roasted the seeds. I did the oh-so-elegant carving, and Silas held the top for us so that it wouldn't get lost and also threw pieces of discarded pumpkin bits off of the deck.Back to the checklist:
Read "scary" stories, including "The spooky old tree" which grandma and pa sent. check.

Wear the cute Halloween pajamas that grandma G sent. check.
And finally,
Put the finishing touches on Si's costume. che--er, well, almost check. Let's just say, it will be ready to go by trick-or-treat time on Friday afternoon. We are ready for Halloween and can't wait!

Pumpkin Picking Pics

Hi! It's me, Silas. Guess what, guess what, guess what? I'm really excited because we went to the pumpkin farm this weekend!

The pumpkin farm is only about 5 minutes from our house. When we first got there, I was amazed. Look at all of the pumpkins!

My mom calls this one "Three pumpkins."

My parents said I could choose a pumpkin, but it's hard to decide. I wanted all of them.

As you can imagine, riding in the cart was one of the highlights. You haven't lived until you've experienced this, trust me!
In the end, we picked out 4 different kinds, plus a couple of little baby ones.

Back at home, we put one out on the front stoop and the rest on our deck.
Mom continued to take pictures.
Just a few more, right?
Well, it's my own fault, really. If I wasn't so cute, she wouldn't take so many pics.
That's the recap of my first trip to the pumpkin farm. Happy fall everyone!