Annual Pumpkin Carving Party

 As is our custom, we headed to Chilliwack, to our favorite farm, to carve pumpkins. Charlie is also living on the farm these days, and Elisabeth and Charlise are fast friends. It's awfully cute.

 See? We've actually known Charlie since she was born, so it's all kinds of awesome that they're friends.

 The first part of our visit, the kids played like mad.

 As you can tell, they're delightful little thugs.

 Finally time to cut up the pumpkins.

 And after a while it was time to enlist the moms to help. There's a whole lot of concentrating going on here!

Pumpkin Patching!

Dave and Alexis invited us to join them at a pumpkin patch. After much hemming and hawing, we settled upon the Port Kells Nursery - it may just be my new favorite nursery!

There were fishies to watch...

And gnomes to rescue...

Even small children under umbrellas.

Ada was enchanted by all of it.

I was enchanted with this piggie.

We finally dragged ourselves from the store and proceeded to the chickens.

While we waited for the hay wagon to take us out to the pumpkin patch, we took advantage of the photo ops.

It may have taken a few minutes to get everyone participating.

But good golly gee, those are some cute kids.

Hanging out with Rubey and Ada makes me miss my kids toddler years.

We finally caught a wagon and made our way out to the field. Ruben thought the wagon ride was just super!

It took us all quite a while to figure out which pumpkins were perfect. In between, I made the kids pose for more pictures.

There were bunnies to be found.

And wheel barrows to fill.

And pigs to watch.

Adelaide soaked it all up.

Then we hopped back on the wagon very quickly just to take a couple more pictures.

Oh right, I have children of my own to photograph. oops!

I don't have pictures, but inside the buildings there were several more attractions: Face painting, a hay  maze, a haunted house and crafts. We also indulged in hot dogs though there were lots of other foods to sample.

And finally we said our goodbyes. Such a lovely day!

Thanksgiving

We don't ever seem to be able to make it to Penticton to visit my dad in the summer. So we've started a tradition of visiting dad for Thanksgiving. I hardly took any pictures this year but here unfortunately.

We had a wonderful time, as always. We arrived after dinner on Friday and watched several episodes of Mountain Men. We were all quickly hooked. It's such an addicting show!

On Saturday, after breakfast, we headed to the Penticton Farmer's Market. After wandering around and finding a new antique store (new to us, filled with fabulous treasures both old and new) we ventured out for lunch. Then it was time to cook the turkey.

Dinner was fabulous. We visited with Linda's parents, then watched more Mountain Men, and then it was bed time.

Sunday, the kids and  Linda went swimming while Dad, Andrew and I went for a drive. It was beautiful.

Monday morning it was time to head home. As always we stopped at Bear's Fruit Stand for some pictures.

David really likes tractors :)

NEXT summer I am going to head out this direction earlier in the year. The prices were amazing. 20 pounds of tomatoes for $7.50 for instance! It was torture not being able to fill the car. But alas, I had far too much work, and no time for canning.

 My favorite part of the drive is from Hedley to Princeton. It's just beautiful.

And we always stop at Bromley Rock for pictures. There's a campsite just here, one day I'm going to camp here.