Halloween Part II: Jack-O-Lanterns

The evening of our lovely trip to Family Farm we carved up some spoooooky Jack-O-Lanterns. The boys drew their own Jack-O-Lantern faces and Pappa carved them out to spare us from my clumsy pregnant hands wielding a giant knife. From left to right the Jack-O-Lanterns belong to: Spitfire, Pappa, Golden Curls, and Mamma.

Our new annual tradition, taking a timer picture of us with our Jack-O-Lanterns...this one with our scary faces on. Boo!

Spitfire loves pumpkin guts

Golden Curls, not such a fan of pumpkin guts

Pappa, looking a little like a horror movie with that knife but he got the job done!

Mamma on scraping duty. Last year our pumpkins rotted before Halloween arrived so I tried this year to get as much goo out of them as possible.

Look, Mamma's belly is the size of her pumpkin!

Halloween Part I: Family Farm

I wanted to take the boys to a pumpkin patch this year rather than just getting their pumpkins at the grocery store and my husband found out about the most fantastic place, Family Farm. We thought we were just going to roam around a field for a bit, pick out pumpkins and go but this place was incredible, we were there for hours! For 5 bucks we not only got a pumpkin but canoe rides, hay rides, tractor rides, they had a zip line, puppet show, playgrounds, giant sling shots, petting zoo with zebra and camels...it was nuts!

Autumn Gift

My little Jackson is the sweetest little thing I've ever known. He's always giving me little gifts of flowers and leaves and is generous with hugs and cuddles. When he gave me this beauty he was very diligent to let me know whenever it fell out of my button hole and suggested many wonderful ways I might be able to make it stay, like tape, and my favorite, just slowing down. I think I'll try to do that. As this gorgeous autumn season gives way to holiday chaos I'm going to do my best to just slow down.

Camping, Retro Style

My parents, the proud new owners of a '60s camper.

Last weekend we all took my parents' new camper on its maiden voyage. It was my first camper camping experience and it was a lot of fun. Really it just stirred up my old dreams of ditching life as we know it and bumming around in a camper! This was also the first camping trip ever where we couldn't have a fire because of a burn ban, that was strange. I'm pretty sure the boys didn't really think we were camping since smores on the fire weren't involved.

The Bohemian and I

Before

After
Graham experienced a right of passage on this camping trip by ignoring his papa's calls to come back, hurling full speed down a giant hill on his bicycle, and going off road and down 10' of heavily wooden hill before coming to a crashing stop. I saw it about to happen from the camp site and was a sight to behold waddling at full speed to go retrieve him.

The boys dining in camper style

They loved the camper and treated it like their personal playhouse.

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails, that's what little boys are made of...and here's some photographic evidence.

Autumn Flowers

I'm so proud of my mums this year! I'm not much of a gardener but I'm getting there one plant at a time. Trying to take it slow and really learn how to take care of a plant instead of getting over ambitious and adding too many at once that just die off because I can't keep up. I have done that before! It was hard to make myself keep cutting them down all summer, seems so counter intuitive, but that's what I read so I did it and it worked. My mums must have quadrupled in size and they are covered in blooms!

That tiny green mound on the far left is also a mum. I got it the year after the giant ones and from a different place, I can tell the difference, he's looking sad. I think it will do better next year though, the back half looks normal. My one big gardening fail was the Clematis vine I planted. Once it bloomed it was clearly not a Clematis. Not sure what the heck it was, the vine grew beautifully but the flowers, not so much. So I was heartless, ripped that sucker out and planted a new Clematis. I'm bound and determined to do it right!

Wandering Jew in the flower boxes is holding up pretty well but it's probably time to switch it out for something else. My Geraniums never did like my treatment of them! In between the mums are some boxwood plants that are doing well. I had to trim the mums back to keep them from getting swallowed whole though.

I love Gerbera Daisies, who doesn't! They're tough to keep alive in the heat of the summer down here but as soon as it cools down they are happy happy happy. It just makes me so happy to have a little pretty in the front of my house!

The Skelegant Mug

Got this Halloween mug from a friend and it's my new favorite. And no, I did not make up the term skelegant that's actually what they call it. Silly as that is I think I have to agree, this is the swankiest skull themed mug I've ever seen!

Countdown To Sonogram

Fine, I'll share a belly picture. I always take them just for the baby books but I'm feeling a little homesick. I don't see family as much since we've moved and I'd like to lessen the possibility that they will fall out in a faint or burst out laughing when they see I've developed quite the pooch. Baby is definitely on board!

Well, it seems there aren't many updates to make about baby from here on out. We're 16 weeks in and the countdown to sonogram stands at 4 weeks. There aren't anymore adorable fruit comparisons, everything is pretty well formed and just growing. As far as symptoms go those will be ever changing for the next 5 months, and many of them simply do not make for polite conversation. Just when I think nausea and exhaustion are gone it hits me like a ton of bricks and I'm laid out like a sick person. I have added massive heartburn, the likes of which I never see outside of pregnancy, to the list of complaints. I've heard that heavy heartburn is a sign that baby will have lots of hair. It seemed to be true with my Lil' Spitfire who gave me worse heartburn than his brother and was born needing a haircut.

I have been having the biggest urge to go out and buy something adorably girly because I'm having the realization that this really might be my last chance to buy something for a baby girl, one that might be mine, and I really want to. If I do it now then after the sonogram I can just "oh well, I'll give it to someone else" but if I wait and find out I'm having a boy I've lost the chance. Then I can have it around to daydream at because right now I'm having the hardest time wrapping my brain around the reality that there is actually going to be a baby in our household. Also, last night I had a crazy dream involving bad guys chasing us. We had to race to the house to get the baby from the sitter. Lo and behold, it was a boy. Now, I'm not a superstitious signs kind of a girl but...ok, I totally am a superstitious signs kind of a girl! But we've had some pretty bizarre signs of girl, like her possible name cropping up in strange places, pretty much everywhere, but I can't talk about that because we usually keep the name a surprise. Anyway, rambling post be done!