Halloween Decorations

Is it okay to be publishing a Halloween post in December? Sheesh, me, get on it already.  Look for more Halloween to come before I get caught up on other news and trips.

Lucy is getting to the age where she wants the house to be decorated.  She's actually dying to get one of those giant inflatables for the front yard, the ones that I have cringed about for years.  And yes, I'm considering buying one.  But I haven't - yet.

And doesn't he just LOOK like a pumpkin?

School Trip

Lucy's preschool went on a class trip to an orchard near Ames.  All four preschool classes I know of have gone on a trip to the same place, so it seems they cater to the little ones.  I didn't get to go because I was working :( so Eric took her.  It was a COLD day.

Eric tells me the day started with an arctic tractor ride, where everyone sat still on frozen bales of hay.  The tractor went up and over hills (Iowa hills, but still out in the open with the whipping plains wind) and the kids were all shivering by the time the ride was over.

Most of the pictures Eric came back with were of Lucy in various window-peeks like the two below.  In the top picture, Lucy is with "the other Lucy", Bowen's little sister.  This old woman in the shoe is a little like George Foreman... get it?  :)

 This is the "corn pool" attraction.  Eric tells me that the corn was almost two feet deep in the drifts and FREEZING cold.  So much for swimming in the fall.

 Posed in the gift shop?  Killing time where it was warmer.

 Lucy with her bag of apples to take home (yum!)  The smile says it all. 

Pumpkin Picking 2011

Playing catch up, yet again.  Anyone reading who has talked to me recently knows I'm working my tail off and not sleeping (much).   This trip to Black's Pumpkin Patch was a couple of weeks ago.

Mariel and I went last year with the kids here and had a great (though weird) experience.  We talked about going back this year, just because when we were there it was like we were part of the family.  You can't not visit your relatives on the holidays, right?  So I rounded up a crowd of my mommies and promised them a great (though weird) time.  This year was a little bit different...

Yes, it was still weird.  There was no ISU tee-pee this year.  Replacing it was this "spaceship" to play in.  It's a grain silo, tipped over, and decorated with random stuff like seats out of a van and a cordless phone.  Baby J got the stroller-eye view.

The control center, with an instrument panel and screen.  My favorite part is the aliens in the corn - that there is no window out the front to see from inside the ship.

And on to the "petting zoo".  This year we had some free-range turkeys near the spaceship, a llama, and the pigs.  I find real animals to be much uglier than their cartoon counterparts, and these pigs were no exception.  The kids got to toss corn cobs to feed them, and you can see Mr. Hay-hideous down there had to extract himself from whatever dung burrow he was in to investigate the corn.  The gal in the white shirt and the hat was our tour guide, so to speak, and gave one of the kids a hard time for trying to double-dip in the corn cob toss.  Really?  Was there a shortage of corn cobs there?

 Next was the all-important pony ride.  Lucy was much braver this year, and the pony was just as sad.  He wasn't, however, tied to a picnic table when we showed up; he actually had a stall.  Again, more about our tour guide later, but the kids were heaved (literally) onto the pony and dragged off after just a quick lap around the barnyard.  Below are the other Lucy and Bowen, a friend of Lucy's from preschool and his little sister.

 Our beautiful family and Carson.

 All the big kids: Gabe, Silas, Bowen, the other Lucy, Lucy, and Carson.  It's really hard to get six 2-to-4-year-olds to look at the camera at the same time.

 What?

 Beautiful Jamie.  My (sigh) Iowa boy.

 Ready, set, go!  Off to the pumpkin hunt!  When we went on our trolley ride to pick pumpkins in the patch last year, Mariel and I got such a kick out of the execution at Black's.  We rode out into a hayfield and had to hunt for a pumpkin in the tall hay.  This year the hay was quite a bit shorter making the pumpkins a little more obvious.

 Ann and her pumpkin and her other pumpkin.  I think Hayden weighs in a almost 30 pounds.  J's a round baby and Hayden's even rounder.

 Mariel and the boys.

 So maybe "pick your own pumpkin" is a bit misleading.  So maybe the tour guide in the white hat was curt and rushed, treated the kids badly, and hurried us through and out.  So what.  The kids had a great time.

 Best.  Pumpkin.  Ever.