The pumpkin hunt

The church down the road from us has had a pumpkin patch all month. I called earlier this month to find out how much the pumpkins were going to be sold for so that I could determine whether it was worth loading up in the wagon and getting our pumpkin there. The church secretary said around $6. And I'm thinking that's not too bad considering Wal-Mart's are $5 and at least the profits go to missions if I get it from the church. Well... we went Wednesday night and the pumpkins weren't exactly $6. An average size pumpkin was selling for $10.

So... facing a dilemma -- I have hyped this up to Kaiya. Should we go ahead and spend $8 (all the cash I brought) on a smaller pumpkin or just can the whole idea and get one at the grocery store instead? And then... how bad is that to not want to spend a little extra for missions.

We show Kaiya the size of pumpkin she can get and turn her loose in the picked-over pumpkin patch. While she is running around I mumble the price of Wal-Mart pumpkins to Tony. He's like -- Serious? We make eye contact and both know that we are getting the heck out of the pumpkin patch. Fortunately about this time Kaiya spotted the section with the baby pumpkins. She fell in love with the baby pumpkins so we just got one of those for $1.50 and went home.


The next day we went to Wal-Mart and they were sold out of pumpkins. Luckily I was able to get a special secret assignment at my local grocery store in which they reimburse me for my purchases... and Kaiya found her pumpkin there. So -- our pumpkin was free this year -- glad we passed on the church pumpkin cause free fits much better in our budget.

Do you ever picture something in your mind a certain way and then it goes nothing like that? I have these visions of wonderful memory making with Kaiya sometimes and it ends up being nothing like I thought it would be. And so it was with the pumpkin carving this year. She woke up from her nap in the crabbiest mood EVER. Every syllable was said with a whine. She refused to touch the pumpkin innards. And in this picture below she is totally faking it. Trust me. She was not as happy as she looks.

After persuading her to grab a handful, she reaches two fingers into the pumpkin while moaning and whining and comes out with this:

Kaleb was content to eat apples. While Kaiya whined about wanting to eat apples I scooped out the pumpkin. It was about now that I realized that I was the only one wanting to participate in pumpkin fun this year. Why ruin the experience with whining. I decided to wait until the peace and quiet and make a memory all by myself.

Kaiya liked it. I had fun doing it. Without her help. :)