A Fall Day Off

Monday was a great day off after a big weekend with the Shepherds Fall Retreat. We had a great day - hanging out, playing games, sharing all of our meals together. We also went up the road to the local apple farm. Their trees were all picked through but they did have a few bins of apples just outside their store front. Even though we were geared up for walking around picking from trees, picking from bins was an easy change of plans... especially on my day off. After purchasing our apples we poked around looking at their animals (3 goats and a chicken) and playing in their hay maze. It was simple, fun, and FREE. It was stacking up to be a really good day off.

I spent the afternoon reading a book while Natalie napped. Then we busted out the pumpkins for our annual pumpkin carving.

We talked about what kind of faces to draw on our pumpkins, then we tried some designs on paper to figure out exactly what we wanted. As I was drawing the face on the big pumpkin Natalie with a cute smile casually said, "Daddy you can pull out the seeds, I'm not going to put my hand in the pumpkin." Kelly and I looked at each other in amazement. We purposefully hadn't mentioned anything about reaching inside the pumpkin. Last year we had Natalie try it and she absolutely hated the whole experience. Apparently it left a lasting impression.
Natalie did put her hand in the pumpkin to help pull out the seeds and the goo, but now until we gave her a vinyl glove.

Nontheless we had a great time with the pumpkins. I also experimented with a new method of carving. I used my Dewalt 18v roto-zip. It was a little too effective. It made carving extremely easy, but it also liquefied the pumpkin spraying it here and there. All said and done though - we ohhhed and ahhhed at the final products all lit up.