Premature Pumpkin-ing

We picked out pumpkins way early this year. The weather was right for it (if not a little warmer than usual) and we had some time and were out and about anyway, so we headed out to Patterson's Fruit Farm. We tried to find the biggest pumpkin there.
It was really difficult to distinguish which pumpkin was the largest and which among the largest had a nice shape for carving.


In the end, we did not manage to find a 57-pounder like last year, but figured the 30 pounder and the 24 pounder would suffice.
Then we had a festive look to the house in time for Lilly's birthday.

Bizarro World?

Bastian flips out.

Bastian's Note

Aleks wrote his dad a note while Jon was sleeping explaining something about wanting to play World of Warcraft later on. Bastian also felt the need to write a note. He chose his wording carefully.

Day at the Beach

We grabbed the opportunity to have one last visit to the beach on a warm afternoon after speech therapy. We hadn't been to the lake at all. We live at least 15 minutes away and really, the nice beaches are 45 minutes away, so it's always a trek for us. We make a special trip.

I took this photo of the boys for Jon. I may have it framed at some point. Like I mentioned, we are huge Wes Anderson fans and this is like the shot in The Life Aquatic.



We collected things.




I'm especially fond of sea glass.
As I sat there, lazily watching the kids play, I dug around in my purse and started working on my to-do list, which is immense these days.
I really needed to be able to multi-task. To do both the things I need to do at home, like work on pamphlets, update this here blog, return emails, etc. and sit and let the kids dig in the sand.
I told Anna as much.
She concurred.
Aleks found a perfect wand.
This guy was staring at me funny.
So Aleks used his magic to help me out.
Wingardium Leviosa!
It worked!

Releasing Zorak

We figured it was mean to keep Zorak cooped up forever. So we decided to release him. I thought we'd take him back to where we found him, but Jon took care of the matter while I was sleeping one morning.

Esteban, the Leopard Gecko

Aleks got a new pet. It's our first, excluding Zorak the praying mantis. I chose the name Esteban because I felt like I couldn't say "leopard gecko" and not think "jaguar shark," like the fictional creature in The Life Aquatic. The jaguar shark ate Esteban in the film, which provides the premise of the film: hunting it down for the scientific purpose of revenge. We won't kill Esteban though. He's quite friendly. He's also only a year old and I found out after the adoption that he's likely to live for 15 years.

Painting Dinosaurs