Perfect Pumpkin Patch Day!

(you can click on the pictures to see them close up)

Yesterday was a perfect family day. The kind that makes you fall in bed at night and feel like all is right with your world. :-)
It started off with picking Josiah up from his youth group sleepover in the early a.m. When we got home, Livvy came back from her sleepover and we all got ready for church (except Clint). Fortunately, the "social butterflies" weren't tired and cranky. At chapel, the children's group was meeting outside for classes with a harvest theme so they played games, had lessons, candy and lots of fun. Josiah helped out with that and was excited to get some candy as a reward (he's still young enough to work cheap. lol). Then we went home, grabbed some lunch (and Clint) and headed to the pumpkin patch. That was relaxing and fun and yielded a good many pictures. I'm having to share the camera more and more with my dear husband which is hard for a camera hog like me but he got some really great pictures (and I finally got to be in front of the camera and "represented" in a family album) I teased him that he was starting to think like me when it came to photo composition (ie: closeup of colorful gourds, etc.). He said that he wanted to take pictures I liked. He knows what I like to include in my scrapbooks. So after we went on a hayride, looked at the animals and picked out our pumpkins, we stopped at Blockbuster on the way home to pick up movies then at the Commissary to get some pizzas and popcorn.

Liam was ready to carve his pumpkin right away so by the time I got into the house, he had already started with a butter knife. Poor guy. We had to tell him that it would have to wait and definitely had to be done with a grownup. We laid around, watched movies (Reign Over Me with Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle...good, thought-provoking movie), ate pizza and topped it all off with a visit from the ice cream truck. After we read stories to the kids and put them to bed, "my shows" came on (Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters) so I relaxed with my ice cream and enjoyed them.

It sounds like a benign day to most, I'm sure, but it was a welcome, relaxing respite for us. We've been so busy and broke that we haven't been spending much time just enjoying each other's company. I've been worried about Clint and Josiah (the older Josiah gets, the harder it is). It's not terribly bad but I often feel like I'm running interference between them. I'm sure Clinton remembers what it's like to be a 16 yr old boy so he tends to be stricter and less trusting. Josiah just avoids him and doesn't answer back in his own defense rather than be disrespectful. Sometimes, though, Clint is right on the money and helps me to not be too lenient. They both need to work on being respectful of each other, I think, and on earning each other's respect. Anyway, my point is that it was nice for me to see them have some quality down time together. I think my husband realizes that he doesn't spend a lot of time with our oldest (which is difficult to do since Josiah is gone so much) and I could really see him making a concerted effort to be involved. Of course, don't tell him that I "observed" that. lol God forbid I should understand him. lol



almost forgot... Liam rode his two wheeler without training wheels for the first time today! He came busting into the house all excited so our whole family (and Josiah's friend, Marquis) went outside to witness the historic event. :-) A couple of weeks ago, he decided he wanted to ride. He came in and got the pliers and took the training wheels off. It didn't go too well even with me helping him and he told me that he would "try again when [he was] 6 yrs old." lol I'm glad he tried sooner than that.