Pumpkins, Football, and a Perfect Fall Evening

The boys have been growing pumpkins in the backyard since July, but so far none of them are ready to pick. So, with Halloween just a few days away, we finally had to make a trip to buy pumpkins.




Cole and Alex chose big carving pumpkins, but Anna Grace had her heart set on a little pie pumpkin. We tried to explain to her that she could not carve such a little pumpkin, but she did not care. She liked the little ones. We decided that she could paint hers instead.

We invited some friends over for a little football and pumpkin carving party. They brought some yummy taco soup and pumpkins for their kids and we made a bunch of other finger foods to eat while we watched the football game.

The girls painted pumpkins....



...and the boys started cleaning out their pumpkins during the first half of the game.





We had perfect cool fall weather for pumpkins and football.


During the second half of the game, it was time to finally start carving the pumpkins. I bought kits with little saws and carving tools so that the boys could carve their own.


The evening ended with cups of hot apple cider while we admired the work of our little pumpkin carvers and celebrated a win for our football team.

Busy!

You can tell that we have been very busy since I have not posted in a long time. I have lots of ideas for blog posts, but I don't ever seem to have the time to write about them. Here is a glimpse of some of the activities that have kept us so busy recently.

The kids had "Crazy Hair" night at church.




Cole was too cool to make his hair look crazy, but Alex and Anna Grace had fun with their crazy hair.


Alex was awarded the "Art Award" at his school.

Each one of the activities teachers (art, music, and PE)gets to pick a student from each grade level to recognize per quarter, and Alex was chosen by the art teacher this time.


My mom and I have been busy sewing cute outfits for Anna Grace.

This is the adorable outfit that my mom made for her recently.



We took a trip to Stone Mountain Park. Anna Grace and I wanted to go to the Rice Festival, and the boys wanted to hike up the mountain.





We were having so much fun that we decided to stay for the Lazar Show.



Anna Grace had a blast dancing to the music on the lawn before the Lazar Show started.



Now, we are busy getting ready for Halloween. The boys' pumpkins are growing very slowly, so I think we will be making a trip to buy some Halloween pumpkins this weekend. We will also work on our costumes since the kids have to wear them to several different activities in the coming week.

Will we have pumpkins?

Cole and Alex decided in early July that they wanted to grow their own pumpkins for fall. They picked out several types of seeds, carefully hoed an area of our old garden, and planted their seeds all on their own. Since then, they have been watering and fertilizing their plants in hopes that their pumpkins would grow for Halloween.


Their plants have had beautiful yellow flowers for over a month, but they were getting discouraged that there have been no pumpkins... until last week when they noticed that some small pumpkins started to grow. The pumpkins seem to be growing very slowly, but Cole and Alex are still hoping that they will have a pile of homegrown pumpkins to fill the front porch for Halloween.


Secretly, I am getting worried that they will not be ready in time for Halloween. When I go to the grocery store and see huge pallets of pumpkins already for sale, I am wonder if Cole and Alex will have Thanksgiving pumpkins instead of Halloween pumpkins. I really hope my two little boys will not be too disappointed if we have to buy our pumpkins to make into Halloween jack-o-lanterns.



These are a few quick pictures I took of Anna Grace when she and I sneaked outside to get pumpkin pictures.

Autumn Moon Festival and the Hunt for Moon Cakes

One of Anna Grace's favorite books is Thanking the Moon: Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.

She loves reading about how a Chinese family celebrates by eating a picnic under a full moon with brightly light Chinese lanterns.


The official date for the Chinese Moon Festival is today, but we celebrated over the weekend since Alex has soccer games on Monday nights.

Last year we celebrated while we watched football on TV, so we continued with the tradition this year. We ate our normal "football finger foods," but we added in some Chinese treats.


Before the football game started, Anna Grace and I drove to the large Asian grocery store about an hour away in search of Chinese moon cakes which, according the book, are eaten during the Moon Festival. Last year we settled for the Southern favorite "moon pies," but I am trying very hard to learn more about Chinese traditions and cultures, and I was determined to find real Chinese moon cakes.

After walking around the store for about 30 minutes without any luck, I started asking shoppers and employees if they knew what a moon cake was. My problem was that I do not read the Chinese labels, and I had no idea what I was looking for. The store is huge and has aisles and aisles of foods that I have never seen anywhere else. Who knew there were so many kinds of soy sauce? This place is nothing like Publix! I must have asked at least 10 people before someone in customer service finally pointed me in the right direction. We ended up finding what we were looking for before we headed home. During our search, we also found Anna Grace's favorite Chinese yogurt drinks, little cups of Chinese fruit "jello" that the boys love, Asian pears, and more of Anna Grace's favorite steamed buns.


Unfortunately after all of that work, no one except Anna Grace liked the moon cakes. It seems that there are different flavors of the filling in the centers and we ended up with a red bean paste filling- not exactly what we were expecting to find inside of a cake!!

Each time I go to the Asian grocery store we find a new adventure. It does not seem common for a white woman to be walking around the store with a beautiful Chinese girl. We get lots of stares!! During our search for moon cakes we were offered fish soup (not yummy!) and oyster balls and got shooed away from the Korean bakery section for asking about Chinese moon cakes.

The Unofficial End of Summer

Summer is not officially over, but the camper has been packed away and the pool towels have been washed and folded for possibly the last time this year. We spent our last weekend of summer camping in the mountains of North Carolina with family. Many months ago, we began planning to join our family for a big weekend of camping to end the summer. We met up with my cousin's and brother's families, and my aunt and grandmother drove to the campground each day.

The trip did not start out as easily as we had hoped. We left Friday evening after I got off of work, and just as it started to get dark and rain started to fall, we got a flat tire on our camper. Thankfully, we discovered the quickly leaking tire when Alex needed (another) potty break and we were able to find a parking lot and buy a jack before the tire was completely flat and the night was completely dark. Then, we made a wrong turn down a very dark and narrow dead end road and almost did not get the camper turned around. We finally made it to the campground just as it really started to rain heavily. Of course it stopped raining right after we got soaked setting up camp for the weekend! Other than a broken pipe that leaked water all over our carpet in our camper, the rest of the weekend was filled with the fun of camping- lots of kids, bike riding, fishing, water slides, roasting marshmallows...you get the picture!




The campground had plenty of things for the kids to do.

The boys enjoyed learning to paddle kayaks and everyone had a great time on the peddle boats.






One of the highlights of the weekend was supposed to be a fishing tournament. The campground advertises a stocked lake.

We brought a prize for the winning family in the fishing tournament in order to stir up some friendly competition.




The winner of the fishing tournament was.... drum roll please.... the fish!!! Not one person caught a fish all weekend. Not even Anna Grace who kept calling, "Here fishy, fishy, fishy!" Hmmm. Now that I think of it, that may be the reason that all of the fish were scared away...Regardless, the kids had fun trying and thankfully the prize could be divided among the 3 little boys who tried so hard to catch a fish.

A favorite of any camping trip is always the campfire and roasting marshmallows.

The campground had a big dance Saturday night in the pavilion, so in between rounds of dancing, the kids came back to the campsite to make s'mores.



This is the little frog that Anna Grace decided was sad because he needed to find his mommy. I was a little surprised that she would hold the frog since she usually does not want to get her fingers dirty.


Now that summer is unofficially over, we are ready for cooler weather, football, and fall leaves.