Fall!

I grew up in Arizona where it looks the same pretty much all year round - beautiful in its own way, but the same. Winter is the cold desert and summer is the hot hot don't-touch-anything-or-your-skin-will-burn-off desert, but it still looks the same. Brian grew up in Florida where it also looks the same pretty much year round. Winter is oh-it's-"cold"-so-you-might-want-to-wear-a-tshirt-while-jet-skiing and summer is picturesque, but HOT Florida - palm trees, the whole business, but really, it looks the same.

So, you can imagine our extreme (borderline obsessive) delight in living in a place that actually has a FALL. The whole place changes! Right now, the air is brisk yet the sun is shining and the leaves are starting to change color. We don't find it at all strange that we say, "wow, it's SO nice out!" 100 times within an hour.

Of course, there's only one thing to do this time of year... head to the biggest craziest pumpkin patch in the world. (that last bit is not a researched fact, just based on my own personal experience) Lucky for us, Oma and Opa were in town (from Florida) and they were reveling in the fall weather too.

So on to the pumpkin patch: in a word - vast. Climbing structures as far as the eye can see (planes, trains, big trucks, pirate ships), pony rides, hay rides, storytelling, a free pumpkin when you leave and 5 GIANT slides. Here's how much fun they were:

This was a tunnel built INTO a farm-size display of haystacks.

At first, I was appalled by this giant mound of dirt, BUT it turns out it has a name: Money Mountain. Kids can climb on it and dig out three treasures. James' treasures: a plastic candy corn man, a butterfly finger puppet, one diaper full of sand and one purple rubber alien that he did not let go of for hours.
No, this is not the pumpkin that he got to take home at the end.