Pumpkins and Dead Leaves

Pictures of Fall! Quick! While it's still Fall!

We didn't go to our favorite pumpkin patch this year. (Or last year.) So sad. They've priced us right out! We still got apple cider donuts there, of course, but Sam just picked them up for us and we ate them at a park in the gathering gloom of what Monday nights are this year. Sam teaches until late, so our family home evenings are always in what feels the middle of the night! But that was fun, anyway.

Pumpkins still had to be gotten somewhere, so another day we (some of us…it's sad to me that the big boys usually don't get to come with us on our little field trips these days, but I must admit it also makes things simpler in some ways!) went to the little farm right by our house, and it turned out to be quite fun. They had emus, for one thing, which Ziggy immediately identified as BIG CHICKENS. So THAT was good.

They had one of those corn pits that seem so fun. Maybe not quite as fun as ball pits, but fun!

Goats. Ziggy loved them and called the long-eared ones "bunnies."

More "big chickens."

So! That was a pretty good pumpkin-y thing to do, as it turned out. Now as to whether we actually CARVED said pumpkins…we did not. But the kids drew faces on them with sharpies, and a bunny on one for me, so that was all right too.

It was kind of a strange Fall all around. We had early cold and early snow, so most of the leaves just turned brown and fell off the trees before we could ever enjoy them! That made me sad. Daisy and Junie and I went up American Fork Canyon like we sometimes do after piano lessons, and everything seemed SO dull and dead at first. It almost didn't seem like the same beautiful place it's been before! But then we found little patches of prettiness—like we always do—and even the less-pretty areas started seeming nicer, once we settled in and started exploring and feeling proprietary about them. By the time we left we were quite convinced we'd been lucky enough to stumbled upon the best spot in the whole canyon. I guess there's a lesson in that somewhere, about finding unexpected beauty once you've looked for it and hoped for it long enough. 

Anyway, you know how it is being outside when the sun is out and you can hear wind in the trees. It's so restorative! I always think, "Why don't we do this more often? Just sit outside doing nothing?"

Looking at these pictures now, I wonder why I thought it was so dull and dead? There is lots of color and life, especially as the sun warms up the tops of the trees.

And as the light hits the water! (I think I take this same picture every time we're here. [Yep.])

The girls rode tree branches like horses, and played orphanage, and I half-read my book (started out as a promising "Emma" retelling…ended with depressing existential drivel…sigh, why do I ever read random books from the library anymore? I don't, very often, and that's why) and half-watched the girls and listened to their funny little make-believes, and enjoyed being there in the warm air, among the dead leaves, letting the sun wrap my shoulders like a blanket until I was almost convinced it would never have to end.