Pumpkins, pumpkins, we like pumpkins

Last Saturday, Princess daughter and I set out with a girlfriend and her daughters on a pumpkin patch excursion. Beautiful fall day, leaves beginning to turn, we headed to the country.

Our first stop was at a very crowded cider mill, which translated, means "all children must jump in a germ-laden bouncy house and climb through the inflatable obstacle course for several dollars per person or you will be tortured by whining all the way home." You're only young once...



The mill's idea of a pumpkin patch was a bunch of store-bought pumpkins piled on haybales that you picked up, stood in line FOREVER to weigh, and paid too much for. After waiting in line for lunch and munching to the twangs of banjos and dulcimers, we decided we'd try a REAL pumpkin patch we saw back down the road a fur piece (remember, we're in the country).

Once we pulled off pavement onto gravel, we knew we were about to hit pumpkin jackpot! Ten minutes later, we spied the real pumpkin patch. Most pumpkins were about $6 each and there were plenty to pick from - in the field - still on the vine (of course, during the romantic idea of all this countrified living, we forgot about the prickly vine part and hadn't brought gloves.)



The girls started out strong - intent on finding the perfect pumpkin.



But then, at some point, I looked around, and my girlfriend and I were the only ones in our group actually looking for pumpkins. The three shortest members of our entourage were sitting in the middle of the dirt road having a tea party.

Could we BE any older?

Recent comments from Princess daughter indicate that she thinks we're old. And she's probably right. By the time she's in high school, we will be several generations removed from the technology she lives and breathes every day.

"I don't want to walk to school this morning," she said recently. "We won't -it's raining," I replied. "But dad had to walk to school when it rained. Oh yeah," she suddenly thought, "they probably didn't have cars back then."

"I know a new song," she announced proudly at the end of one school day. "There's Sunday and there's Monday; there's Tuesday and there's Wednesday..." she began to the tune of The Addams Family TV show. "There's - what's next, mommy?" As I easily continued on-tune with "There's Thursday and there's Friday, and then there's Saturday. Da-da-da-dum. Snap. Snap. Da-da-da-dum. Snap. Snap." "Hey - how do you know that song!?" she yelled. "Well, the tune is from an old black and white TV show that daddy and I used to watch when we were growing up." "Black and white? What's that?" she asked.