Fall

I can't believe Halloween is only two days away!  Ben has a costume and I just bought candy today.  I bought two bags, one of sweet candy that includes my favorites such as Nerds, Sweet Tarts and Laffy Taffy and another with chocolate.  The chocolate bag contains 150 pieces.  Hopefully, there will be some left for trick-or-treaters on Wednesday. 

 

Halloween is something I look forward to as a parent but I don't think anyone would fall for a parent taking a seven month old trick or treating...that candy's obviously not for them!  I haven't decided if I am going to dress up and what I will wear if I do.  It will have to be something from a previous Halloween. 

 

Here is some of my fall decorating...

 

Those mini pumpkins are from our back yard garden!  They are kind of small and stunted, just like the rest of what grew back there.

 

I bought the white pumkin and that huge gourd from a stand in my hometown.  I also bought a carving pumpkin at the grocery store today.  There is a pumpkin patch near Mandan, but we never got around to going there.  I feel like a dissapointing parent not taking Ben to a pumpkin patch.  Facebook is full of pumpkin patch footage and poor Ben missed out!  Oh well, next year...

 

Actually, I have been campaigning with my parents to start planting a pumpkin patch again!  We did it for several years when I was growing up.  This patch was so productive that we kept what we wanted, gave the elementary school kids a pumpkin, and let anyone else who wanted some take as many as they wanted.  And still, many were left when it was time to plow it under before winter.

 

 

Look at that vast expanse of pumpkins! 

 

I want to have our own pumpkin patch for a few reasons.  The first is that pumpkins and gourds are suddenly, in my opinion, exhorbitantly expensive from the store.  The carving pumpkin I bought today was $5.00 and it was just a medium sized one.  The large ones were $8.00!  Even the gourd and pumpkin I bought from someone's stand were $11.00 for the two.  I know that gas is expensive, the economy is bad, there was a drought, blahhhhh, but I think this is all way to expensive especially since I read that this year there was an abundance of pumpkins in this area because of the hot weather.  Also, I know that a huge bulk sized bag of hundreds of pumpkin seeds cost around $20.00 back in the 90's when we planted ours and there is no way those seeds cost more than $30.00 or $40.00 now and one bag could produce thousands of pumpkins.

 

I also want one because it was fun and now that I have a child I want him to get in on the fun as well!  There is the slight problem of weeding the pumpkins...as kids, it was our job (mine and my brother and sister's) to occasionally hoe the rows before they spread out.  Now that no kids are home, there is no one to do this task!  However, I remember hoeing only once or twice, and honestly I don't think we took it very seriously.  Also, I know that my brother never lifted a finger just like he was exempt from most duties and never put his own laundry away, emptied the dishwasher or any other typical chore.  When we had to clean and dust if we were having company he was usually sitting on the computer looking at baseball stats while my sister and I cleaned.  What a princess.