Snow Biking Pumpkin Patch Vegetable Deception

Family Pumpkin Patch photo, Farmington, Utah, October 10th, 2008

Silly threesome

Last night was the 4th annual Taylor/Knight & now Bunch & Sue & Dave Pack's Pumpkin patch family outing. Pumpkins were picked (from the vine!), pictures were taken (more to come), and the cold was felt (it was freeeeeezing!). Owen searched and searched and searched for the perfect pumpkin. He finally showed me with his arms, what shape he was looking for, and we found one within 3 pumpkins. H picked from the first 2 he saw, the biggest. I picked P's and ours. We had dinner at a Doug & Emmy's like place, Grandma Ana or something, and we are still feeling it in our guts. I've never been there after 10am. And we still had breakfast, Utah fried scones as big as your mid-section included.

Today we did the soccer thing, felt ill, then late afternoon, it looked sort of sunny (although freeeeeezing) I thought we could go on a bike ride. AK & PJ were napping so we bundled up and stuffed Owen in the trailer, raised H's seat (finally!) and headed off to Katie's. H was determined to bike the 5 or so miles to Kate's house, even when it started snowing. I knew I had to cut it short, but I was having a tough time convincing the little man, when finally he made a turn back and a block later was in total complaint mode from his cold fingers (I had been asking him every 10 seconds if he was okay, not too cold, since "it isn't going to get better", and he wouldn't budge!). I just kept telling him what a great story we had now that we went biking in the snow (like crazy people!). We were not very happily (on his end) biking along when we stopped to cross Parley's and he fell off his bike, I knew it was all over. We walked the rest of the way, and I tried to stop talking and talking him into what a fun time we had, to absolutely no avail. By bedtime, he had finally come around. Still, for the 2nd time this summer, claims he "will never ride that bike again." I hope he does, despite his cuckoo Madre.

Also of note, update on the autumn cooking craze, I woke up early to make the oatmeal bake thing, was able to shove it down my kids throats within 10 minutes of the first game (topped with my homemade applesauce, the bestest!). Then I proceeded to roast a huge "butternut squash" (it was spaghetti, I cannot tell from the outside), and sweet potato, which I later pureed in my processor to keep from 'Deceptively Delicious' recipes. Tried the first one tonight and it worked! I spread the squash puree on the bread (spy-tech like) then the cheese, and baked the grilled cheese in the oven (new technique from allrecipes, I liked it!), and voila. H got a little vegetable (more than he has had in the last 765 days) and never even suspected it in his favorite meal. More to come...