The Great Pumpkin Caper, Part 1

So we fed some goats and picked some apples and posed like dorky tourists with our heads through some particle board scenes, and then we hit the pumpkin patch. Okay, not necessarily in that order, but STILL. We hopped in a little red wagon and made our way to the field of pumpkins.

My sister was a bit disappointed with the pumpkin patch, I think, because the pumpkins were already cut and just waiting to be picked out -- not unlike a Christmas tree lot, really, only with, you know, pumpkins instead of pine trees -- but I've seen pumpkins in the wild, and I prefer them this way.

Shae and G made their way straight to the back of the patch, examining and stepping over every other pumpkin on their way ...

... until Shae found the perfect one in the very back row.

As much as I would love to get one of those giant two-ton Guinness Book of World Records quality pumpkins, I already don't know what I'm going to do with the one we have, which is just about the size of Shae's head. Plenty big to sit on the dining room table until we get around to doing something with it, or until it starts to rot and we get fruit flies, I suppose.

In the end the pumpkin she picked was about eight pounds. Probably it's enough pumpkin to make a pie out of, but I think it's the wrong kind of pumpkin. Neck pumpkins, I think, are what my grandmother uses to make her homemade pumpkin pies, but this particular pumpkin is definitely the kind you want to use for jack o' lanterns.

I'll let you know what we finally do with it. Hopefully we'll come up with some kind of plan before Part 2 of The Great Pumpkin Caper, which is when we go to a different pumpkin patch with my aunt and her son next weekend. Until then, we're leaving Shae's pumpkin on the dining room table, and every day she smiles when she sees it, and says "I picked that one out."