Fall Festivities

We had quite a fall weekend this weekend starting with a trip on Friday with Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop to Linvilla Orchards or "our Pumpkin patch" as Jack and Luke like to call it. It's a really nice place complete with hayrides, live animals, lots of pumpkins and a Farmers Market of sorts. They enjoyed climbing all over the pumpkins, jumping on the haystacks and running around kicking dirt--and that was just Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop. Of course Jack and Luke loved showing them the ropes.

Friday night we went to a neighbors house for a Pumpkin carving party which was really fun. Jack and I carved our 1st pumpkin ever which says BOO....it has been the preferred greeting recently by the boys to everyone that they meet. Luke was a little grumpy, since Friday was also flu shot day, and went home a little early with Daddy. It was so nice for me to spend a little time alone with Jack. He really enjoys doing things one-on-one and was intrigued by all the carvings. He so wanted to carve it on his own but we both quickly learned that it's pretty difficult if your pumpkin is thick like ours so we enlisted the help of more experienced 8-year olds to help us! They transformed their whole basement into a carving area with 5-6 picnic tables and atleast 20 people working on pumpkins. We walked home hand in hand on a cool evening with the leaves rustling beneath our feet and the "moom" shining. Luke and Daddy waited up for us on the front porch and we heard Luke yelling our names from a block away.

Today we went to the zoo for their festive "Boo at the Zoo" event. The boys donned their Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater costumes and set off all around the zoo to the trick-or-treat stations. Of course everyone was greeted with the standard "BOO"! It was such a beautiful day to walk around and we stayed a few hours before Luke had a meltdown over the lack of vanilla drinks at the zoo. Who knows? We had a great time. They also just opened a brand new carousel at the zoo and instead of horses there are about 20 different animals which are amazingly carved and so beautiful. The whole carousel looks like a rainforest. You can see a part of it in one of the attached photos (Jack was riding a butterfly and Luke a Leopard but in the background you can see an armadillo... "it's an armardillar"--I crack myself up) As I am writing this Dan just went upstairs to spring someone from nap time and I heard "BOO".....

I feel required to say Go Phillies as my husband is not coming to bed until 2AM these days. I read in the paper today that Tim McGraw sprinkled some of his father's ashes on the pitchers mound yesterday before the game. Now that's a good story. I could really care less about the outcome of the game (although I do enjoy their new stadium) but a good human interest story always compels me to continue to Google.... so Go Phillies!