Living Next Door To Jimmy Appleseed

I have been a bad bad girl and have not blogged for a long time. Never mind the fact that I am a NaBloPoMo drop-out. I have been saving lots of things to write about, namely, the fact that we live next to a man who has tons of trees on his property - he told me once that they came from seeds he planted years ago. That is all fine and dandy. I love trees. But the man refuses to clean up after them. In the seven years we have been living next door to him, we have never once seen him rake his leaves. They just keep blowing onto our yard - then onto the neighbors' yards and pissing everyone off.

He does not own a rake!! He must not, because it's never been used.

Here are pictures of our front yard. Mind you, our landscapers completely cleaned our yards the day before - and not one leaf was seen. Because of the winds, these leaves you see are from our neighbor's yard - and are now our headache.

Mark and I complain about this every fall - and since this is our last fall in this house, I am glad we won't have to deal with again - because our future next door neighbors are thankfully very anal about their yards. The only bad thing there is that we are afraid they will complain about us. We plan on keeping the landscapers - there would be no way to keep up with the neighbors otherwise!

Recovery

Mark and I were pretty happy with our Halloween party. Nobody called the cops, nobody puked in our house, and it seems that all our guests made it home safely.

All that preparing though - all those nights of rolling dough, moving toys and furniture, washing platters, and creating cobwebs left me absolutely exhausted and sick as a dog. I have a bad cold and cough and my doctor put me on some antibiotics. I must admit that I added the color green to my description of my mucus in order to get the prescription. I needed to be more convincing. This is the second time in 2 months that I've been sick. No sleep!!

The party was fun and preparing for it was fun too. But now that it's over, I am dying for our house to look like Halloween does not exist - even though Halloween is tomorrow! One thing's for sure though - I will make it a point to do more fun things with Ricky this week - the poor kid was ignored so much during our preparations and shipped off to Grandma's for the weekend. Now I realize why my friends with multiple kids don't have bashes like this.

On Pursuing Pumpkins

When I gave birth to Ricky, I vowed that I would do everything in my power (and as much as my wallet allowed) to give Ricky fun and enriching experiences. This includes vacations, trips to museums, parks, playdates, and an annual trip to a pumpkin patch.

My parents never took me and my sister to a pumpkin patch and for this I do not feel like I am any less of a person because of it. But I do think it is one of those fun, family activities that lets you take some time out to enjoy the fall colors, have some fun as a family, and stuff yourself at the local Crackerbarrel restaurant afterwards.

As we did last year, this year we went to Siegel's Cottonwood Farm. Not only does it have a pumpkin patch, but a toddler train, a train for adults and kids to ride (new), hayrack rides, pony rides, petting zoo, corn maze, bouncy thing, and a big scary giant. They do a great job over there.

The three of us had a lot of fun and it was a beautiful day. Unfortunately, my camera battery died when we first arrived, and I am so pissed off that I don't even have one picture to remember this day. But I guess I can just make up for it tonight, when I videotape Mark helping Ricky carve his big pumpkin.