Pumpkin Season 2012

Have you ever thought about the Holidays? HA, of course you have.  Not the usual way but I mean, have you ever thought about how one day suddenly becomes a week or “twelve days” of holiday?  Well, it is not just the twelve days of Christmas and Thanksgiving weekend, Halloween is the same.  Besides the usual Trick or treating there are other fun Fall activates families can do to “get in the spirit’.  We choose to take a family trip to the Pumpkin Patch, carve pumpkins, visit the Woodland Park Zoo Pumpkin Smash and decorated spooky cookies. 

We went a record number of days without rainfall this year in Seattle.  As we entered the second week of October, I started to ponder wither or not there would be any mud at the Pumpkin Patch this year.  As it turned out the weekend we had planned to go, the rain finally started to fall.  There was defiantly a short of puddles for jumping but we did manage to find some dirt and get dirty as we adventured around the Pumpkin patch with Grandma Laura and Grandpa Mark. 

I always love watching the kid’s faces on these adventures.  They get so excited that their eyes light up and they squeal with excitement.  We told Issac he couldn’t get a pumpkin he couldn’t carry… OOPS! He took that as he could get EVERY pumpkin he could carry.  Quickly the cart started to fill up with Issac sized pumpkins and we quickly had to explain to him that he only gets to take home ONE.  Josie loved running around & climbing on the various hay stacks.  She quickly became a pro at sticking her lil head through the wood cut-outs for pictures.  She would climb up, stick her head in & say “cheese”. 

The weather had turned chilly and we were lucky to have a break in the rain while at the pumpkin patch so we headed back to our house for some of my homemade twice baked potato soup to warm up.  After lunch we played with the kids and had some cookies before Laura & mark headed home to Marysville.  We carved our pumpkins the next evening.  However, once we got four pumpkins topped and gutted the kids & us were spent.  Sadly, we never carved pumpkins into them (I know we dropped the ball).  But we did place them outside until they got black & rotten. 

The third weekend of October we used our Zoo membership to check out the Woodland Park Zoo Pumpkin Smash.  We took a small break and enjoyed some hot chocolate & cupcakes inside the food pavilion and watched various animals interact with pumpkin through the day.  I must say though, the penguins were the most enjoyable to watch.  Maybe because we got a front row seat or because the zoo keepers had drilled holes in the pumpkins and stuffed fish inside so the penguins were going wild for them pumpkins and it was as if we were watching a penguin game of football.  As usual our family had a good time and both kids fell asleep on the drive home. 

The last weekend of the month we had a visit from Grandma Melanie.  My Mom arrived Friday and took the kids & myself to lunch at Sizzler.  We spent the evening at the house and I made dinner. After dinner, my Mom & I went & tried our luck at the Muckleshoot Bingo (no winners). On Saturday after breakfast we went to the Supermall where my Mom bought the kids & herself new winter coats among other items.  Before dinner we made homemade sugar cookie dough.  If you know anything about sugar cookies, it is that the dough has to be chilled over night.  After breakfast, while Tyler took the kids on a walk Sunday morning, my mom & I rolled out & baked the cookies.  After lunch we had a blast decorating the pumpkins, ghosts & other Halloween shapes.  Issac loved the sprinkles, he used the entire jar!!! Josie kept sticking her fingers in the icing and going, “yummmm”.  After the cookies, my Mom headed home.  We had a great visit. 

Well, I think I proved my point.  Halloween is not just one night of candy horting.  Halloween is a mini-holiday season of its own.  We enjoyed October, it was a busy month with a new 7 exciting adventure each weekend.  My next post will be about Halloween, because the day was so cool, it gets it’s very own blog post.