fall

Yesterday we had a nearly open day. Between work, school, soccer, and various musical activities, someone almost always has something going. But yesterday there wasn't much on the schedule. So I decided it was a good day to plan a family activity. This idea was met with varying levels of enthusiasm. Dear Husband was on board, but wanted to do something way more involved than what I had in mind (like drive an hour away and visit a zoo and a museum and goodness knows what all else). Talked him out of it fairly easily, though, and he got to work with the What's Happening from the Friday paper, trying to find something a little smaller scale.

Both kids asked about playdates as soon as they were awake. Like, "Good morning, mother. Can I have a playdate with ______?" My son was ok with the family day idea, but my daughter, not so much. She's very close to being a teenager, and I think yesterday she got a little closer. We ended up going to the Carpinito Brothers farm, where they had U-pick pumpkins and a corn maze. Dear Son thought it was all very cool, and spent the afternoon leading us all through the corn maze and evaluating the pumpkins to find three that would work for a pumpkin snowman. Daughter sulked. When she wasn't pouting. Somehow we ended up taking home $40 worth of pumpkins - don't ask me how that happened - and she did manage to get engaged with the process of picking out her pumpkin(s). And she also liked eating the caramel kettle corn. Other than that she did a darned fine imitation of a teenager. So maybe we're in the fall of her childhood, and soon she'll be moving full on into a new phase of life. Last month she took the picture of the Aspens that's attached to this post. She's a good kid, a talented kid, and while it's sad to loose my baby, it's going to be cool watching her grow up.