Go blue, and happy Halloween, too.

Carved.

Pumpkin carving. Jack-o-lanterns. Irish boiled dinner. Read about the connection in last year's pumpkin carving post (because I hate to feel like I'm repeating myself), or just know that we enjoyed an evening of traditional Halloween fun with good food followed by the entertainment of slimy pumpkin gutting. It's time to get your spook on—Halloween is just around the corner!

Pumpkin tour stop 2, and some portraits

Some rain, some cold, a little wind, and just enough sun—it all adds up to the true feel of fall, those days that are crisp when you wake in the morning, but warm enough to go sans jacket by lunchtime (if you're wearing a sweater, that is). As wimpy as I am I've mostly abandoned my leisurely morning runs for quicker versions snuck in just after Jon gets home and before it's time to serve dinner, that time when the sun has warmed the air just enough to make deep breathing bearable. The tailgate yesterday was a tad wet, and the wind that came in last night took a lot of beautiful leaves out of the colorful trees, but it's early enough in the season that there are still a lot left. If we had trees to speak of in our yard we'd be raking about now, but as it is our baby trees don't drop enough leaves to make the use of a rake worth while.

It's hard to believe that Halloween is less than a week away. In fact, when I realized that yesterday morning, and connected it with the fact that I have yet to do any work on Calvin's costume, I had to fight the momentary rise of panic that affects all procrastinors when we are finally disillusioned of our ability to cheat worldly temporal constraints. The smart thing would have been to start work on the aforementioned costume immediately. I'm sure you already know that's not at all what we did yesterday. Instead, with just one pumpkin gracing our porch and only so many days before carving night, we decided to make another stop on our pumpkin patch tour.

I'd love to tell you where we stopped for pumpkin tour stop #2, but I can't really. I can only point you to it's location, on the west side of Wagner Road between Scio Church and Liberty. It's a patch that has been there for many years—I remember visiting it when I was in high school—and I'm pretty sure it will forever remain nameless. We've driven by the farm countless times over the past month, passing its pleading "pumpkins here" sign with its ubiquitous arrow, and I can only remain deaf to such pleas for so long. There are no signs on neighboring roads even, so you just have to be going past or already know that it's there if you want to find this little gem.

Up front I can tell you that if you are looking to spend a day on fun filled activities when you make your yearly visit to hunt pumpkins, this is not the farm for you. The Wagner farm is a bare bones experience at best; no hay rides, no hot cider or donuts, not even a pumpkin farmer to take your money, just a box with a couple of slits in the top and an undisguised trust in the honor system. But, it's a real farm house with a real barn, lots of room for picture taking, and the pumpkins are beautiful—great shapes, great colors, great stems (the stems are a real selling point with us). They had a number of pre-picked pumpkins to choose from, and also allowed free roam of their pumpkin countryside, where you can also find butternut and acorn squash, gourds, and itty bitty pumpkins. And the prices are great—$5 for the biggest of the pumpkins, $4 for the slightly smaller ones, and 5/$1 itty bitties.

It may have been a bare bones experience, but it was great fun to hike the fields for a while and to take advantage of the beautiful fall farm textures for some fun photography. Even without the frills this one gets an A+ from us. Local is great when it's well done and at a good value. And now we have enough pumpkins, so bring on Halloween!

We took a number of fun fall photos and some portraits. Check them out right at the beginning of the new October 2009, too album.

Good times tailgate fun.

Tailgates are always fun because they come before the game. Enough said.

It begins

Bedtime for the younger set is between eight and nine o'clock in our house. Some day it will come earlier, but that will be after both Calvin and I are willing to give up his daily three hour afternoon nap. For right now we begin our ritual as the clock approaches eight, and finish, some time later, with three books, a final potty trip, then songs and stories in bed, at which point the last parent in the room (usually Jon) tucks in a hopefully sleepy little boy and heads downstairs. We've already dealt with that phase of perpetual recoiling from the land of nod, when every five minutes one or the other of us is called upon to "open a door," "turn on the white noise machine," "close the door," "find another blanket," and all other such manners of delay. For the most part these dilly-dallyings have subsided.

Imagine, then, my surprise two nights ago at walking up the stairs, heading for my own dream realm at near midnight, only to spy a thin line of light escaping from under that little boy's door. Inside his room our son lay fast asleep, sprawled across the bed surrounded by upwards of twenty books, having turned on his little dresser light by which to enjoy them. I vaguely remember nights spent reading by flashlight well into the hours of morning, and, ignoring niggling worries about his sleeping patterns and crankiness the next day, this was a sight I fell in love with. I collected the books, tucked in the boy, and turned out the light.

The next day, sitting on the front porch eating lunch, a hint of peanut butter all around his adorable little mouth, I asked him about his late night reading. With a very, very sad face he exclaimed that he just wanted to read in bed. How does one say no to that? I was in danger of subverting my parental control, so I offered that if he wished to read in bed we could skip play time and go to bed earlier so that he could do so. "Can we do that tonight?" he asked. Absolutely. And when we did, you'd think he'd died and gone to heaven.