I once thought of Halloween as a simple holiday. A single day of costumed, candied fun. Not a holiday SEASON, like Christmas or Thanksgiving. Just – Halloween. But somewhere, somehow this family started stretching Halloween into a several-weeks-long pumpkin/fall/Halloween celebration. Y’all, I have enough pumpkin and Halloween stories to last all week!
To kick things off, we visited the pumpkin patch with my parents again this year. They’ve been here in October almost every year since Colt was born and this year Laura was in town, too, so we all headed off into rural Northwest Arkansas in search of the great pumpkin.
Confession: my favorite part of the entire pumpkin patch tradition is hearing Colt say “punkin”. Repeatedly. Punkin patch! Punkin wagon! Let’s pick out a punkin!
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My brother Tom used to joke about his future children having a “Crazy Aunt Laura” someday and – as the textbook middle child – Laura typically accepts this title with pleasure and humility — but I’d say Laura has some competition in the ‘crazy aunt’ department. And both of them? Together? Forget it. GOOFBALLS.
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Colt is so lucky to have them both. He may not have his own siblings, but he’s surrounded by the kind of laughter and silliness that keep you young, keep you sane, and make you misjudge the distance to the ground…
Either business has been GREAT for pumpkins this year, or the crop was small — we couldn’t find many pumpkins still on the vine! Eventually, we found the perfect little punkin and plopped him into our punkin wagon — Colt already jabbering about carving his guts out. We added a few funky shaped gourds to the mix and we were ready to roll. Welcome, Fall!
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Resilient little guy! Jumps right back up while we all stood back and laughed.
He’s a pretty tough cookie :)