The Pumpkin Patch

We’ve made it our little tradition {as we head into the holiday season, I’m warning you that I’ll use the word tradition about 84,000 times. sorry.} to stop by the pumpkin patch for the first time as a family on the way home from church. It’s a good time to pick out our ‘family’ of pumpkins, let the kids play a little and have Daddy join us for a Halloween outing. We always revisit the pumpkins another time or two, but this is a great kickoff to Halloween for us.

With three kids, these outings are lots of fun, but a little difficult to capture with the camera. There is virtually zero chance of the three of them staying within 20 feet of each other, so I feel like I’m just pointing the camera, snapping a picture and praying that one of my kids makes it in the frame. It’s a bonus if the picture quality is any good.

Emory was most excited about purchasing her pumpkin to take home, so she immediately found one and was ready to buy it.

Boland was a little confused as to where the heck he was. I keep thinking that he was around last Halloween…forgetting that he is a November baby! Whoops! He seems so old for this to be his first Halloween!

And these pictures crack me up. They capture the phase Watson is in right now just perfectly! Hands on hips, talking to himself, sunglasses on. Age two is the perfect mix of knowing how to communicate and coming into your own little personality, but not yet being too self conscious to actually be that little personality. When he’s in his little element, he might be the funniest thing ever.

Boland wasn’t a huge fan of the grass, but was distracted a little by standing at the biggest pumpkin we could find. My attempt to get a sweet sibling picture was interrupted by Daddy, who told them to pretend to play the drums.

After the first four years of having children during the holidays {I have a hard time believing this is Emory’s fifth Halloween!! what the heck?!?} I skipped the matching holiday ensembles this year. In theory it doesn’t bother me, but looking at pictures I think it odd that they’re in just regular church clothes at the pumpkin patch. And Boland looks like he should be at an Easter egg hunt instead. Oh well.

Emory thinks she is a model. She’ll pose, let me take a picture, switch poses, pause for a picture, switch poses, pause…on and on and on.

See what I mean about snapping away and hoping I capture something good on camera? I saw movement to my left, turned and snapped, but magically it was our friend James instead of one of my own kids! He was super cute having his little picnic at the patch and Emory and Watson thought it was so fun to see a friend there. The entire ride home Watson asked, ‘I pay wif James now?’.

We ran into a few more friends and the kids entertained themselves quite nicely while we chatted.

Emory and Watson wandered over to the tree and were watching the cars race by on the street. I half-paying-attention snapped some pictures, but not until I put them on the computer did I realize they looked like they were trying to model for a clothing magazine.  As ‘posed’ as they look, they were just hanging out, talking, hugging and laughing.

We had fun picking out our five pumpkins for our front porch and can’t wait to go back to play with some friends!