Naki and I learned through trial and error that it works best for our family to pick pumpkins one week, and then actually do the carving a different week. It seems to help minimize conflict and stress, probably more for me than for them. I figure if I'm trying to create happy and pleasant memories, then I should figure out how to eliminate as much stress as possible. It has worked great for us, making each event much more enjoyable. Many years ago while I was teaching one of my piano students he mentioned their family tradition of traveling to this fantastic place where they take tractor rides through fruit orchards out to pumpkin patches where they get to hand pick their pumpkins. I was sold on the idea immediately, and with the exception of a couple years, we make our way there every October. This year the weather was PERFECT. Just perfect. It was one more way that I feel like Heavenly Father continues to bless my efforts. To those of you who don't know, I started school last fall. For reasons other than I am crazy, I enrolled in 16 credit hours. Trust me...I could've sat at my computer every minute of every day and still felt behind in my schoolwork. I found myself frustrated at times because I felt accountable to those whose scholarships I had won and to myself ultimately and struggled figuring out how to balance being mom and student. I knew that it was more important to make sure the girls knew they came first, always. Pictures do not do justice to the nonstop track of thoughts of what assignments were due and how behind I felt as well as how much sleep deprivation I was under, not to mention how many loads of laundry needed to be done or what I would pull out of my magic chef hat for dinner. I am glad to know that somehow that didn't show up on any of our faces, hopefully meaning that they weren't negatively affected by all of my stress and that the girls and I were still able to do the things that we love. The Monday afternoon that we headed out there was absolutely the ONLY day that worked with our insane schedule, and I felt so loved when it turned out to be such a gorgeous day. As for the pics, my apologies for all the pictures with black in the corners/edges. My shutter that is the cover for the lense of my camera was stepped on by some little lady's foot which resulted in some of the pieces of metal falling out and others left hanging in front of the lense. Arrgh. I still need to take that in to get fixed.































Here is a short video we caught that day. It was hilarious, looking at them all squeezed into this cute old truck...kinda like a clown car.