Pumpkin Patch Field Trip

It's field trip week at Tyler's school. Each day a different class gets to visit the pumpkin patch at the ranch and today was his day. The temperature was in the upper 60's, so it was the perfect weather for picking pumpkins. Much better than the rain we had last year. Besides picking pumpkins, the kids also went for a tractor ride and decorated caramel apples.

Here's the pumpkin Tyler picked to bring home. Isn't it a good one? Now once we add it to the ones already on our front porch, we'll have a total of 8 pumpkins of various sizes. Phew, I don't who's going to be in charge of carving all of them!

And here is his caramel apple, decorated with all kinds of stuff. He used a little bit of everything....marshmallows, Trix cereal, candy corn, white chocolate chips, M&M's. Even the bottom is coated with cocoa krispies. Appetizing, right? Well, at least Tyler thought so.

While Tyler was away at school, I continued working on his costume. Actually I had to run over to Joann's to buy the necessary snap closures for the hood and shirt. After I sew those guys in place, I can start on the fun part.

Sewing on the feathers. So.....how many feather boas does it take to cover a 5 year old child? Let's find out.

What's Left

Over the weekend, I spent a little time in the garden clearing out some more plants. The irrigation water was turned off last week, so that makes it a done deal. I pulled out the bell pepper plants and one of the two tomato plants. The other one I stripped down to bare branches, giving the remaining tomatoes one last chance to ripen up.

Here's what the garden looks like now....nothing but one sad tomato plant and a ton of carrots.

I don't know how long I've got before it starts freezing overnight. Maybe a week? So that's how long the tomatoes have to either ripen or say goodbye.

I have more carrots than I know what to do with, so hopefully these guys can stay in the ground a little bit longer. Or maybe I should pull them all up and make multiple carrot cakes. I'm sure Rick wouldn't mind that at all.

And this is what I brought back into the kitchen. A bowl of ripe tomatoes and a few bell peppers. That's a lot of tomatoes to have all at once, but I already used a couple of them and a bell pepper in the spaghetti pie I made for dinner last night. I'll use a few more in salads this week and the rest.....?

No Santa Here

It looks like I need to give a better hint about Tyler's Halloween costume, since the guesses were not even a tiny bit close. While I have to admit that Santa was a good guess considering all the red fleece going on, it still wasn't right. I'm probably 3/4 of the way through making the costume, so if you can't figure it out yet, I'm not doing something right.

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This is the main part of the costume. It's just a top, so I'm not sure what he's going to wear with it. Jeans, sweat pants.....I don't know. Rick thinks I should make a pair of fuzzy pants to go with it, but that sounds like more work for me.

And here is the head gear, a work in progress.

So have I made it perfectly obvious, or should I add sound effects?

Corn Maze

It's been a few years, but we finally made it back to Schell's Giant Corn Maze. Last time we got lost and I mean LOST! After spending a few hours in the maze, apparently going in circles, we finally gave up and came back out the entrance. Not the best memory ever. Maybe that's why we skipped it last year. But this weekend, we were ready to give that pesky maze another try.

 

 Here we are at the entrance.

 So far so good.

Then the boys started acting like what else....boys! Running through the maze, hiding in the corn just to jump out and scare each other. They were having fun, but I was worried about getting lost again. It didn't matter because we found our way out in no time flat. Huh!? If it was really that easy, I don't know what our problem was last time. Turns out the maze isn't so scary after all.

In fact, we were done so early that we actually had time for some of the other activities....like pumpkin chucking. While waiting for our turn on the tractor ride, Rick and Tyler saw how far they could sling-shot some mini pumpkins.

It doesn't look like that pumpkin is going too far, but it actually landed way back near that football goal post looking thing. Not bad!

After our turn on the tractor ride we headed over to the kiddy section. Tyler had some fun going through the hay maze as well as a separate kiddy corn maze.

A few hours later we were ready to go home, but not before choosing a complimentary pumpkin to bring home. Now with the three large pumpkins we already had at home and the three new small ones, we'll really have some serious carving to do.

Pears By The Pound

I was browsing through one of my Cooking Light annuals earlier this week and came across a whole section of pear recipes...mostly desserts. So I asked the boys what they preferred, something like a pear pie or crisp, or more of a pear cake. We narrowed it down to a pear crisp and I even had all of the ingredients on hand, except for the pears of course, but I knew just where to get some of those.

Johnson Orchards. It's one of our favorites.

They had all kinds of good looking pumpkins for sale, but that's not what we were looking for.

We needed 12 pears for the recipe, or about 5 pounds and as you can see, there was plenty to go around. I went with the Packham pear, which was recommended by one of the owners. I'd never heard of that variety before, but it turns out it's pretty good.

Tyler and I brought our bounty home and got right to work on the dessert. Well, actually he's been fighting a sore throat and cough, so he kind of fell asleep and missed most of the action. That's okay. Once you get past peeling all those pears, the rest is pretty simple. I put it in the oven at 5:00 and an hour later it was ready just as we were sitting down to eat dinner. So it was still nice and warm when we were ready for dessert. Mmmmm Mmmm Mmmm.

Candy.....Check!

The one thing I love about Rosauers is the 13-hour sale they do on Thursdays. Not every Thursday, but maybe twice a month. They usually have a theme and my favorite one is the cereal sale. The meat sales are good too, but in October nothing beats the Halloween candy sale.

So that's where I was this morning. As soon as I dropped Tyler off at school, I stopped at Rosauers to hit the big candy sale with all the other sweet-toothed maniacs in town.

You can't really beat the price and they have a great selection.....as long as you get there early enough.

And with the stash of coupons I've been collecting from the Sunday papers, I was able to fill up my basket and make a good deal even better. But even with 11 bags of candy, I have no doubt that we'll still run out on Halloween night. We always do.

Take a Guess

Before Halloween was even over last year, Tyler already knew what he was going to be this time. A cowboy. That was the plan until October rolled around and then suddenly he wanted to be a robot. That sounded fine, although I really didn't want to make another costume out of a cardboard box. After our experience last year, I realized that boxes are a little too restrictive. That's why I was pushing to stick with the cowboy idea instead.

Over the weekend we went to Joann's to look for patterns. All the Simplicity patterns were .99 cents a piece, which is a steal. We found a few cowboy patterns, but the one we really liked was sold out. So now we've changed the plan again. Tyler is not going to be a cowboy or a robot, but something else entirely.

You want to take a guess?

Here's a hint.....it involves red fleece.

I almost finished cutting out all the pieces today. Who knew fleece was such a nightmare to cut? Or is it just my scissors? Hopefully I have better luck with the sewing phase or this might become a slow going project. I guess if all else fails, we can always run out and get him a premade cowboy costume at the last minute.