Last one comes so fast

Monday was like any day at my boring job but a comment from one of the bosses really gave me pause. He asked if we had taken the little one to a pumpkin patch over the weekend. First, I must point out that he only inquires into others lives if he gas something he wants to mention about his. Second, he's really not  interested in your life and you're best off giving a short answer. Otherwise, you can see his pure disinterest in his continuing of what he wanted to say. I learned this early when I first started working here. Anyway, I smiled and responded that we had. He went on to say that they had also and then he said "It was our last year. That went by quick!" and his eyes met mine and I could see a tinge of sadness in them. His daughter is 18 this year and will be graduating from high school in May. His son is a junior in college. It made me think, you only do get a certain number of these things with your kids and we've already had 2! But I will feel so very blessed if we are able to have another 16 (at least) with our little one. I hope she wants to spend time with us as she gets into her teen years and I hope she knows how much of a sap her mom is (and will always be) and will indulge me. And a note to my mom, I'm not indulging you, you know I enjoy doing those kinds of things with you and that's why I want you and dad to be there as much as you can with us too. :) If we're so lucky to have those, yes, I will be sad when it's our "last one" but I hope we'll be able to create new traditions with her as she grows and maybe even continue old ones. Although I don't know that she'll be as willing to sit on the pumpkin or wear a shirt with a pumpkin on it when she's 16, 17 or 18 :)

Pumpkin Day!

After a long absence it was a beautiful fall day for picking a pumpkin! Today we went the Harvest Festival at our local Botanic Gardens. The weather was perfect, not too hot, not too cold. The sun was shining and the pumpkins were laid out for the picking. Of course there was A LOT of people there. They had free activities for the kids including decorate your own fall cookie, make a monster hand snack (with popcorn and candy). They had bean bag toss, hoola hoops, bouncy castles, tractor rides and of course, lots of food. I was, however, quite disappointed that they didn't have any booths with pumpkin pie!! I personally think funnel cakes are over rated unless maybe your at a state fair or something, but you would think at a "harvest festival" you would have pumpkin themed dishes. Maybe I should make my own booth for next year! There wasn't even cider! There was lemonade. So other than having the summer fair food and drink on the menu, it was a fun time. Our little cutie was quite content with the pumpkin she picked and tried with all her might to pick up her own :)

A beautiful fall finished with our pups 5th birthday. A bath and a pupcake in celebration of our "first born" :)

Play

When we were kids, my brother, sister and I had fairly good imaginations and liked to create situations and sometimes other worlds to entertain ourselves. Those are many of my great memories of childhood. Like when we pretended that we walked through a portal into a new world, or that we were in the old west, or one of our favorites, pretending that the floor was hot lava and we had to stay on the furniture or melt in fiery magma! I miss that a lot. Just being able to just let your mind be free! Two of my favorite words of late are 'Mama play!' I love to play with her! She'll have all her stuffed animal friends sitting on her blankie and she says "Hi fends!" (Translation: friends).  And we'll read or color or talk to our 'fends'. I would stay and play forever if I could. Sadly that's never the case. There's always some 'grown up' thing that desires my attention. But I try to always say 'Ok! Mama will play!' before I attend to my less fun 'adult' things. Even if I'm going to be late (as was the case this morning) because who can really turn away from that little plea? Not me, nor do I want to. The work, chores and responsibilities will always be there, but M will only be little for so log and only want to play with mama for a while so I'll take it while I can get it and worry about the rest as it comes. Besides, who couldn't use a little more play time?