Celebrating The Halloween Season

Halloween isn't just an event for my kids, it's a season. So the last week or so has been filled with trips to a couple of different pumpkin patches, hayrides, Halloween parties, picking out and creating costumes, carving pumpkins, and of course the big night last night. It reminds me of why holidays exist in the first place - to mark a season, to have a sense of the year turning 'round again, to create family rituals and moments, to let free our creative spirits, to remember the joys of being truly childlike and imaginative, and of course to have fun and eat candy!

So without further ado, here's our photographic tour through the Halloween season...

Stop #1: On a family bike ride, we stopped by the harvest festival thrown by the one of the "city farms" - big community gardens. They were pressing cider, had a blacksmith shop, worm bins and composting, and of course pumpkins!




















Then later that week, it's on to one of the bigger pumpkin patches just out of town, to feed the goats and get some bigger pumpkins...



















Except that their hay ride was taken over by busloads of school kids on field trips... (and I always wonder when I see this, how our school districts can complain about class sizes and not having enough money to buy books, but I digress...). Bottom line, we couldn't even get on the a hayride to get a pumpkin! So we headed to a different pumpkin patch the next day. This one was fun because "Crazy Walt" gives the hayrides, and he sets up pumpkins on top of scarecrows and all the kids go pick tons of tiny pmpkins to use as ammo, so as Walt crazily drives the tractor, the kids are trying to knock the pumpkins off of the scarecrows. It was really fun!

























And of course the hay fort!

























Then it's pumpkin carving with crazy dad, not to mention the curious kittens...






















And last but definitely not least... costumes and The Big Night...