Golden and Orange and Autumn

We had a fun-filled autumn weekend. With a teacher work day on Friday we took the opportunity to head to a local corn maze. The owners claim that this is the largest corn maze on the east coast. It's pretty awesome. This year's design is of a bunch of hot air balloons with Virginia historical and college logos on them. We decided to tackle the hour long maze which included finding 14 trivia stations and a puzzle at the end. After the maze the kids ran and climbed on a hay mountain and we caught a hay ride. Just a perfect afternoon.

 Later in the weekend we ended up at a local nursery to pick a couple of pumpkins for the kids to carve. They had a great selection and decent prices.  It didn't take them long to pick out some great ones. Since they were still in their church clothes I even got a few cute pictures of them finding just the right medium for carving. Jeff tends to wander towards the taller skinny pumpkins. Erin always likes the rounder ones for her jack-o-lanterns.My rule - you must be able to carry your own pumpkin. This is never an issue for the boy, but Miss Boo tends to be a little over zealous with the heavy ones. She got lucky this year that I wouldn't LET her carry her pumpkin in her church dress so that wasn't an issue.  The Boy, on the other hand did a great job lugging his selection around the store.




This year we made it through our carving night without losing power to a hurricane. Erin found a design online for a kitty and Jeff tried to copy a simple Angry Birds face. Both turned out really cute. I was especially proud of Erin as she did almost ALL the carving on her own as well as scooping the guts. She was asked to change out of her Sunday clothes at carving time, and she reappeared wearing a tank top, jean shorts and a kids cooking apron. I couldn't help but burst out laughing at the difference in apparel.

While the kids carved, dad cleaned and separated the seeds for roasting. I even got the chance to carve my own night scape pumpkin with a moon and stars. Never too old to carve a pumpkin.