Fall Fun Week: Baking Day

I have mentioned before that Luke’s love languages are quality time and gifts.  I need to amend that.  Luke’s love language is pumpkin pie, followed by quality time and gifts.  I never ate it growing up, but Luke cannot get enough of it!  He first tried it last year and preschool, which necessitated my learning how to make it at home.  I think we all know how clueless I am in the kitchen (I prefer the term “differently abled”), but it’s actually not that tough to make. 

Once October hit, Luke’s hankering for pumpkin pie returned, and he had been begging me to make one.  So last week, while he was at preschool, Anna and I obliged:

I cannot tell you how excited Luke was when he heard that there was pumpkin pie at home.  His enthusiasm was a little shocking, actually.  Ever since then, Luke has been plotting a pie-baking day, and has been deciding who we are going to make pies for.  Along the way, we got a magazine in the mail that had some “Pear Bear Muffins,” on the cover.  The muffins quickly got added to our to-make list. Also on the list was a pumpkin pie made from a real pumpkin.   So yesterday I got all our supplies while grocery shopping.  And since my cell group was coming over that evening and I needed something to feed them, we decided to start with our apple pies that afternoon:

Anna had insisted on napping in her Dora pajamas.  Don’t ask.

I love Luke’s tongue of concentration…

…and Anna’s look of glee!

Per Luke’s plan, we gave one pie to our neighbors and split the other with my cell group.  We still have leftovers today, but now they have some competition…

We made our pumpkin pie first, which meant preparing the pumpkin.  Here’s something that your differently-abled-chef-friend Kim will tell you that you won’t hear from others:  Pumpkins are hard to cut.  All big squash are hard to cut.  And so are sweet potatoes, for that matter.  No one acknowledges this.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone complain about how hard sweet potatoes and big squash are to cut, but it is true, my friends.  Now, maybe that has something to do with the combination of my personal wussiness and/or lack of any sharp knives, but I prefer to think of it as a result of the granite-like qualities of the fruit/vegetables in question.  Anyway, moving on…

   After pureeing our pumpkin, we added just a touch of sugar, along with a few spices and eggs and whatnot…

…and the results were wonderful. 

These are really flattering shots, I know.  But I think they convey well the kids’ enthusiasm over the pie.  Luke did say, though, that he liked this pie “just as much” as the one from the can.  So…canned pumpkin it is, from now on!

After lunch and pie, we began our last baking project:  Pear Bear muffins.  These muffins are so named b/c they have cute little pears for ears.  Well.  The muffin batter ate our pears, so our muffins became “Pear Surprise” muffins.  As in, “Surprise, there are two baked pear slices floating in your muffin!”  Differently abled, people, I’m differently abled.  Remember that.

So I drew the ears on with icing.  Whatever. 

Despite the lone “wolf” pumpkin that I made before I realized that bear ears are supposed to be round, I thought these turned out cute.  Luke loved putting the chocolate chips on himself.  And they tasted really good, too.  I personally thought the hidden pears added a lot:).

Whew!  That whole day was probably more exhausting than it should have been, but on the plus side, our house is stocked with goodies, and we have several treats to take to our neighbors.  Also, if you haven’t deduced it, I’m going to be slacking off on trying to eat healthy for about…oh, let’s face it:  probably until about January 1!

Fall Fun Week: Pumpkin Decorating

Yesterday, our Mommy and Me group got together to let the kiddos decorate pumpkins.  It turned out to be a small group, which usually ends up being my favorite type:).  The kids all played wonderfully together, and chaos was at a minimum.  Midway through the play date, we let the kids paint and decorate their pumpkins:

The finished products.  Anna, or should I say “Anan,” did not need my help putting her name stickers on:).

Luke got done first, and had fun playing on the floor with Greyson.

Afterwards, the kids took advantage of the fact that they can jump on the couch at Maddox’s house.

Luke had way too much fun wrestling with the other boys.

Then today, they decorated pumpkins in preschool.  They only used stickers, so I’m trying to convince Luke to let us take the stickers off and make a pie out of this pumpkin.  I think he’s on board. 

Baking day is not until tomorrow, though….

Fall Fun Week: Pumpkin Carving

We have several fun fall activities planned this week, culminating, of course, in trick-or-treating on Halloween.  Today, we carved our jack-o-lantern.  We bought the pumpkin last week and told Luke we would carve them on Monday.  He has been asking for days if it was Monday, and when Monday would come.  Needless to say, he was excited to finally get to carve the pumpkin.

First, we de-gunked.

Then, we needed to draw the face.  Luke had been practicing drawing faces, so I was a little surprised to see what he came up with:

Hmmmmmmm…Luke understood my laughter to mean that something wasn’t quite right, so he said, “Oh yeah, I forgot that I wanted to make him mad.”

I then had to explain to him that he was thinking too small:).  Greg demonstrated various faces, using my hand as his paper.  Did Luke want a happy pumpkin…

…or a mad pumpkin?Luke went with mad.

     Ta-da!  Greg got a Magic Eraser to get some of the extra sharpie off of the pumpkin…

…and then we lit it. 

               O00000h…spooky!

Luke looooved pumpkin carving this year—much more so than last year.  Good thing he is so pumpkin crazy, b/c tomorrow our Mommy and Me group is going to decorate pumpkins…and then his preschool class is decorating them on Wednesday!  And on Thursday, per Luke’s request, we are going to try our hand at pumpkin pie, using a real pumpkin and not a can.  We were going to use this pumpkin, but I looked it up online, and apparently, you need a specific kind of pumpkin.  So “pie pumpkin” is now on Wednesday’s grocery list.  Stay tuned to see how our pumpkin-y week goes!

Pumpkin Patch

In accordance with the rules of blogging, alluded to here, I will now report that I took my children to the pumpkin patch this year.  We went with our wonderful mommy group.  It was so much fun, but also pretty hot!  I guess roasting hot Octobers come with the territory of living in SC!  Also, unlike other pumpkin patches I've seen on blogs, at our pumpkin patch, you can get really dirty.  By the end, my kids both looked like street urchins.  So no cute, autumnal pictures for us!  I think my kids would take fun and dirty over cute and posed any day, though.

One of my favorite moments came even before we left for the pumpkin patch.  It came when I walked down the hall to see Luke helping Anna get dressed:

Man, I love that kid. 

Once at the pumpkin patch, we paused to climb on a tractor:

Then we poked around the pumpkins for a few minutes:

Next, we found the greatest thing on earth, according to Anna:

It was this giant, inflatable obstacle course and slide.  I finally had to go check on Anna, as Luke had already lapped her a couple of times.  But there she was, almost to the summit.

VICTORY!

Luke loved it, too, along with his friend, Maddox, who is behind him.

After about 17 slides down the slide (to Anna’s nine or so), Luke was ready to move on to the giant jumping pillow:

Anna was less enthused:

She seriously would have stayed on the inflatable slide all day long.  Sorry, kid—we’ve gotta keep it moving!  Sometimes, it is hard to keep them both together in the same area:).

Anna finally calmed down and played in the dirt around the jumping pillow.  Then, she went to see the giant slide.  Both kids loved this last year, but neither felt the slightest inclination to slide down this year.  However, Anna DID enjoy standing at the bottom of the slide and laughing at whomever popped out.  You can barely see the tube in the bottom left corner:

Ahahahaha….

                                 …heeheeheehee….

…It’s the funniest slide in the world!

Who’s next out of the magic slide?

In the meantime, Luke climbed on giant hay bales with his friend, Noah:

He enjoyed throwing the hay and letting the breeze catch it.

He also got pretty covered in it!

Next, the kids swung on this giant tube/swing contraption.

Then, we all went on a tractor ride:

Luke, with the Kennedy children.

My favorite picture of the day, hands down.

Good try on the smiles, kids:).  By this point, they were starting to wear down, and they were covered with dirt.  Luke looks like he has a black eye b/c of the dirt, and his lip is even bleeding a little, unbeknownst to him.  But they had had a good time.  Once the hayride began, Anna commenced making bizarre, inexplicable faces:

Lovely:).

What on earth?

The kids enjoyed seeing the different Halloween decorations along the trail.

Afterwards, they stopped and looked at the goats and rabbits:

Luke looked so grown up today.  Several people commented on it, and I agreed.  These pictures remind me that he is really not a toddler any more.  He is a boy.  My heavens.

Afterward, dirty and exhausted, we went to Just Fresh, one of my favorite lunch restaurants.  On the way, Luke used my camera to take about 317 pictures of the inside of the car (wonder where he gets his compulsiveness from?).  My favorite, though, was this self-portrait:

Classic. 

We had a fun, dirty, exciting, exhausting time at the pumpkin patch.  It has become a really fun yearly tradition!