Without Costumes

 

It's been a beautiful October.  Plenty of warm (some windy!) days. 

 

 

Plenty of outdoor autumn fun. 

 

 

Including our annual red barn outing. 

 

 

 

 

 

And our caramel appled Sunday afternoon at the cemetery.

(Delish! Thanks, Sarah!)

 

 

And our private little backyard pumpkin patch!

 

Such a happy harvest!  There were plenty of pumpkins, even after the preschoolers took home their picks!

 

L and S have had endless fun arranging pumpkins on the porch.

 

 



(And visiting with the attending creatures.) 

  

Pumpkins weren't our only winter crop!  

Those are banana squash.  And I promise they're supposed to be that big (or bigger, I'm told!)!  I didn't know.  We picked a few this summer thinking they were some kind of overgrown, mutated yellow squash.  Shortly thereafter were got some sound education from Brother L, our resident gardener, and we made sure to let the others grow and grow and grow until just last week.  Our storage room is stocked with these beasts and they are sure to keep us alive all winter.  Along with the spuds Brother Leavitt helped Spencer to grow =) (why can't I find the pictures of the potato harvest??!  I know I was busy snapping instead of helping to dig!! =)

The night we harvested our last squash and cleared our garden plot for the winter looked like this (only so much more beautiful): 

Spencer and I spent the late afternoon and evening alternating between the pink house, where we combined earthen ingredients into all kinds of masterful brews, and the garden plot, where we dug up dried vines and fed them to Big One (Spencer's insatiable lion that lives in the black garbage can).

 

Those are my favorite kinds of days.  Working and playing together outside.  I kept hollering for Lucy to come and join us.  She occasionally did, but was mostly content in the house, writing poetic spells to accompany Spencer's brews.    

Another sweet evening of togetherness fell on the night of the elementary school Halloween carnival.  I was scheduled to help out for the first hour, and hoped I'd be doing something like monitoring a craft that would keep L and S busy until we were free to peruse the carnival together.  Instead, I monitored a line for the hour.  And loved my two little people for w a i t i n g s o o o o o patiently, without complaint, until our volunteer hour was up.  At which time we hoped to ride the train.  But it was sold out. Follows:  tears from my patient girl who, upon investigation of the remaining games, realized that the carnival held no great excitement.  "At the assembly today, I thought it would be so fun!!!" she sniffed, overtired from her long wait.

I hugged her and tugged her out to the car.  We talked on the way home about an alternate plan and settled on a sleepover together in the basement.  I made the popcorn while the kids changed into jammies.  We put a fresh sheet and a mountain of pillows on the futon and I pulled out Anastasia, which, I realized, my kids had never seen!  Oh, how they loved Bartok, and oh, how I cried when one of our wedding video songs played during the credits, but, oh how we all loved that snugly evening in our cozy basement.

The caffeine from my late afternoon headache fix kept me up long after my little ones were asleep. 
Seemed like I laid and prayed all night there beside them. 
And that's a memory to be treasured much more than any school train ride or round of pumpkin ring toss.