Fall Tradition

Dear Daughter's favorite holiday, next to Christmas, is Halloween. I don't know why she has a fascination with this holiday. I, personally, hate it. I'm not excited about all the candy. It's not only unhealthy for your body and your teeth, but with Daughter's peanut allergy, it make it a serious health scare. Nearly EVERY chocolate candy has a peanut warning on it whether or not it is intended to contain peanuts or nuts of any sort, as equipment is shared between candy intended to contain nuts and candy intended not to. Daughter loves chocolate, and it is miserable to sort through her candy and tell her over and over again that she cannot have it.

I also hate the costumes. It creeps me out to see people, even kids, dressed up as ghouls and demons. Daughter has never gone trick or treating because the costumes creeped her out and scared her at a Halloween party we took her to one year. I figured it would only be worse running around outside in the dark. Dear Husband and I have our own Halloween traditions. Before the wee ones came along, we would go out on Halloween so that we didn't have to be home to hand out candy and further the cause of this stupid holiday. Since the kids have been born, we just turn out all the lights and hide inside. We've never had anyone ring the doorbell with the lights out.

Nonetheless, Daughter is entranced with this holiday. A couple weeks ago she found Halloween cake decorations while shopping with me at the Stuff Mart, and she talked and nagged about making Halloween cupcakes until we finally did it. Her expression in this picture is not even a "pose." She just looked this way the whole time we worked on this project!

One activity we do enjoy in October is going to a local pumpkin farm. We enjoy a hayride to the pumpkin patch to pick out some pumpkins. Here is Dear Son scouting for one. Seems kind of funny that there is absolutely no pumpkins to be seen in the picture. There were pumpkins there, though.

Then we take the pumpkins back to one of the tents for Daughter to paint one.








Son got in on the painting fun this year, too. Check out that expression of pure concentration on his face.






Then we take in a magic show put on by one of the entertaining clowns. This year Daughter volunteered herself for one of the acts.





Later Daughter gets her face painted by the same clown.




















And the kids also get balloon animals made by a clown.

Daughter's favorite part every year for the past three years has been the inflatable jumping house. She has to revisit it at least three or four times before we end our visit to the farm.

This year we were remarking that the whole experience has gotten rather expensive with the price of admission increasing generously each year we've gone and many of the activities costing additional money. And of course they always rip you off good with the cost of refreshments. We were thinking that we now have the space at our own small country acreage to plant a pumpkin patch, recruit a few clowns, and charge $7.50 a head to enter.

It was just shy of 90 degrees at this year's visit to the pumpkin farm. As wrong as this is, it's not unusual. I prefer my Fall activities to feel like Fall and not like Summer. Surely the fact that it's been this hot two out of the three past years we've visited the pumpkin patch doesn't suggest that Al Gore is right after all.