Pumpkins, Pumpkins Everywhere

It's fall.  YES!! We got a cool front the past few days, and it's been awesome, in the 60's.  We tell Lucy important dates relative to the weather.  Like... it'll be Christmas when it gets really, really cold.  Daddy's birthday will be when it's just a little cool (November).  Your birthday will be after it gets really cold and then it gets really hot again (next June).  Etc, etc, etc.



Anyways, it was cool yesterday.  And out of the blue, Lucy goes, "It's almost Daddy's birthday!"  Since she has no concept of what day we're on, let alone what month we're in--I thought that was pretty impressive.



The Arboretum is awesome this time of year.  Well, it's wonderful from a pumpkin perspective.  It's lousy from a solitude perspective.  The place is crawling with kids, moms, old folks, and especially elementary school classes on field trips.  That last category made my recent trip with the kids pretty hectic.



I've never arranged flowers in the middle of a hurricane, but I bet it would be something like trying to pose three tiny people in the pumpkin patch, while hoards of 8-year-olds are released all around you.  It was exhausting and sort of miserable.



But we got our pumpkin pictures out of it, so there's that.  Plus, Nonnie came with us (score!), so that was a treat for the kids (and me).  We wandered around the gardens and eventually made it back to the car, completely exhausted.



Yesterday we went to a different pumpkin patch -- in Richardson.




It's a church fundraiser, where they sell the pumpkins ($$$$) to raise money for... something.  Their church, I guess.



Anyways, it was fun.





It was cold and windy, but the kids loved getting to pick out their own pumpkins to take home.



Lucy hated the large pumpkin I picked out.  She said it was taking up too much space in the wagon.
 

But if we're going to carve a Hello-Kitty into a pumpkin, it's going to have to be a pumpkin big enough so the design can be recognized.



We worked on cleaning out the pumpkin(s) after naps.  I took approximately 200 photos (by interval timing, a feature on the camera) in order to get this. one. shot.  That shouldn't be amazing to me... I've tried interval timing photography before, and it always ends up about like that.  200 photos, for one shot.



But, I'm glad to have the picture of me with the kids. 

It's hard to get these kinds of pictures.  Especially where we're all actually doing something kind of fun (and not just smiling at the camera).



So, I'd say it was worth it.