Gourds, Pumpkins and Toadstools

Last Fall we made a trip to Oklahoma City to see Son's family. While we were there we took G3, G4, G5 and Girlie to a "pumpkin patch." It wasn't actually a pumpkin patch though. It was in a church parking lot and a fund raiser for the youth of the church.

All of the kids picked out pumpkins and I brought home some bumpy gourds to use in some Fall decorations. If you've been stopping by for awhile you may remember I put some on the porch and Mikey thought we'd brought him some new toys.

After the gourds were just about gone I cut them open, took out the seeds, cleaned the stringy stuff off and dried them.

I put the dried seeds in envelopes, sealed them and stored them away in the refrigerator. In early June AD planted some of them for me. We've never done anything like this before so it was kind of an experiment.

The patch in the picture at the top of this post is the result. I'm thinking the big orange thing behind this green and orange gourd is a REALLY ripe left over cucumber. I didn't bother it since it's propping the gourd up so nicely.

Yesterday evening I went out to see how everything was progressing. I've been out there many times but this time I took my camera.

Son's kiddos brought me some of their pumpkin seeds after their pumpkins were all used up last year. This is the only pumpkin I've seen in the patch so far but maybe there are others.

I'm kind of excited that the experiment worked and we'll have ugly gourds and a pumpkin or two for the Fall.


It's been really wet here the past several days and while I was out by the patch I noticed a lot of toadstools growing out in the pasture. Here are a couple of little ones



and here's one of the bigger ones.

The weather is a bit cooler now and I can definitely smell Fall in the air. Yea!

A Weekend of Pumpkins, Birthday Cake and a New Puppy

Last Friday we drove to Oklahoma City to visit Son's family. Their little foster daughter was celebrating her 3rd birthday.

She requested a "Hannah Tannah" cake and Son made this one for her.



She was thrilled! They told me that she was "taking pictures" of her cake with her toy cell phone earlier in the day. How cute!

She had the biggest smile on her face and giggled and giggled when everyone sang "Happy Birthday" to her. I wish I could show you a picture of that but unfortunately I can't. After some miscommunication a few months ago I found out that it's a HUGE NO-NO for a picture of a foster child to be on the internet.

See the parts of letters and a hand print on the tablecloth? That's a tradition I started back when G1 celebrated his first birthday. Each kiddo has their own birthday tablecloth (we made them out of white sheets.) Then each year we put fabric paint on their hands and have them leave a set of their hand prints on the tablecloth. The year is painted by that set of hands. It's fun to watch their hands grow through the years. (A few years ago G1 and G2 decided they were too old for that sort of thing but it's a wonderful keepsake anyway.)

On Saturday morning we loaded up and went to buy pumpkins for Halloween.

G3 has very discriminating taste in Halloween pumpkins. I think he examined almost all of the pumpkins there.



G4 found this pumpkin and it looked like a pretty good one.




Eventually they decided on these pumpkins.




Of course their foster children got pumpkins too. I think they'll have a lot of fun decorating them for Halloween.

After AD paid for the pumpkins we were told that we could pick 2 smaller pumpkins to take with us for free. Halloween is very close and they had an over abundance of the smaller ones they were wanting to get rid of them.

G3 got to examine even more pumpkins for just the right 2.



Son is supposed to help the kids with pumpkin carving and send me pictures. It would really be interesting to have pictures of Son helping the kids because he's much like Kathy over at Four Dog Day. He thinks pumpkin guts are gross and yucky. I don't remember him being that way when he was younger though.

Son's family has 2 Schnauzers. Their names are Lightning and Sally (think Pixar Cars movie). A couple of weeks or so ago someone gave them this adorable Yorkie. His name is Mater and he's a cutie-patootie!




I think Lightning is a little jealous. Sally may be a little jealous too but I didn't get a good picture of her.

The dogs do get along well though. At one point they were all laying close to each on the couch asleep. It was the cutest thing ever.

A birthday and pumpkins and a new puppy. How much fun is that?