Pumpkin Picking 2008

The first two pictures are from last year's Murphy family traditional pumpkin pick. Look how much the boys have grown since then. The rest of the photos are from tonight.

After a Sunday of organizing Tom's boatload of percussion music, (we still aren't done, but we called it a night on that!) we decided to bring dinner over to Mother Nature's Farm for our traditional pumpkin picking. Using some of the proceeds from our garage sale on Saturday, we sprung for some Happy Meals for the boys.

I will say that I broke tradition this year and did not force my children to wear matching outfits/colors for pictures. They truly enjoy wearing their hats though, so I just let it go this year for hats only. That is pretty low-key of me, since I love matching outfits.


Connor remained true to form, exploring from precarious spots and not wanting to stay still to be measured on the pumpkin height chart. Considering the low light and having to blind them with my flash, it was amazing I got two halfway decent photos!


The boys enjoyed the bouncer-even Ian, my cautious one, ventured in since there were no children in it. (it was a nice, quiet evening, not crowded at all!) Connor didn't want to leave the bouncer for other activities, but we let them return later on, hoping it would get them tired for bedtime. (ha, ha, ha-these kids have the Murphy gene for bedtime)


Let me out!
We got a cool tractor ride through the field and past the strip mall adjacent to the farm. Ian was not nervous about it this year-Connor was unhappy, mostly because we interrupted his bouncer time. He settled down once we got going.

This was the highlight of the evening-the hay bale maze! There were no lights illuminating the maze, so it was a lot of spooky fun for the boys. Ian declared this to be his favorite part of the evening and so did Tom.

The boys each got a pumpkin to decorate with their admission. The first year we came, they had painting with smocks and all. The next year, they changed it to stickers. This year, the sticker boxes were glued to the tables.

This is my favorite part of the tradition, especially hunting for all the letter stickers to spell the boys names. Last year, our little next-door neighbors would come up and pilfer the stickers from our pumpkins, which was pretty funny too.





My artsy photo of the evening. My camera battery was running low, so I didn't get as many cool shots as I would have liked.
I did like this photo of Ian. I am so glad we have this tradition. Tom was saying that if we move, he would miss this tradition. Wherever we go, the pumpkin picking tradition is a must. Hopefully, it will just include more family to enjoy the time with us, to make it even better.

Happy October everyone-plus we are enjoying the crisp 80 degree weather here! We opened up all the windows and Ian, a true Arizonan, has been complaining that he is cold. Brrrrr!