A Sad Tale

I love this season and we are building traditions here that I have truly enjoyed. One tradition has been the pumpkin patch. We've gone every year since we came to Virginia. Yesterday, we decided, a bit last minute, that it was probably the only good time to go since next week will be busy with a birthday and anniversary. We loaded up in the car and headed over to the patch. This year though we did not see the sign for 'all you can carry' pumpkins for $20. Odd. So Bobby asked the man about it. He said the hurricane in September really did some damage to their pumpkin harvest and they just didn't have the stock this year to offer that. We were a bit bummed, but no big deal. We boarded the tractor and went for our ride. The view was the same, beautiful.
We drove past the same horses and chickens as every other year. However, when we got to the pumpkin patch there were no pumpkins growing from the ground. They had been placed there. Instead of vines and pumpkin blossoms there were just tall mounds of grass. There were plenty of pumpkins to choose from, but there were also a lot of pumpkins that were crushed and some were even moldy. Poor pumpkins. Luckily, all the kids managed to find a suitable one to take home.

Look at all that grass... no vines anywhere. And the broken pumpkins! So sad.While we were out there was a beautiful view of the sun's rays shooting through the clouds, I had to try and capture it even though I only had my phone.
We still had a great time and hopefully, next year's crop will look better.

You Can Curse Around My Kid Any Time!

Well, just kidding. Please don't use bad language around my child, or me for that matter but... a funny thing happened last night.
Way back in July I purchased a Groupon coupon for $15 for two hours of bowling for two, shoes included. I thought it sounded like a great date with my husband, something different. Well for whatever reason we never used it and it was about to expire.
I decided to take Caleb with me. I gave it a lot of thought. Brooklyn and I like to watch cheesy girl TV shows together. Seth and I like to read together. Of course Ayden and Dillon demand a lot of attention. Caleb gets the short end of the deal and he loves to do physically active things. Actually, once I gave it some thought, the choice was not so hard.

Caleb when we first started bowling.

We showed up around 4:30 ready to bowl. The place was pretty empty just as I figured it would be on a Monday afternoon. A father and son were way down at one end and another man had just come in with his four bowling balls to practice. He was away from us too. However, the little shop where they sell balls and towels was right behind us and a bunch of men were hanging out. One seemed extra, how can I say this, comfortable there? I don't know if he worked there or just hung out. He was sitting at table behind us and yelled a bad word. More than once. It was a pretty bad word, one of the worst. I turned and looked and Caleb. He and I made a face at each other but we continued bowling. I did turn around from time to time to see what those guys were doing.
Before I knew it the manager walked up to me and apologized for the bad language and gave us a gift certificate for a party of ten for two hours, including shoes. Wow! That is a pricy deal he just handed us. The cussing was brief, the guy did walk away from us and he wasn't cussing AT us, but I really liked to see this guy trying to make his establishment family friendly. It was clean, everyone was so helpful and I'm excited to go back again with my entire family!

Caleb and I pretty stoked about our coupon!