It's October: Time For Pumpkins/Chile Peppers/My Birthday/Parades/Etc

Why is it that my birthday always seems to fall on one of the most chaotic weekends of the year? This year, October 25th fell on a Saturday...the last Saturday of a seriously crazy October. My birthdays over the past few years have coincided with ward camp outs, Primary meetings, and sick children. This birthday, I knew, would already be somewhat overshadowed by my father-in-law's passing. What I didn't expect was how much more stuff would fill up the week surrounding my birthday as well. 

NOTE: the events recounted in this blog post are not all in chronological order, just the order that makes the most thematic sense. It was such a crazy end of October, I can barely remember the chronology anyway.

It all started with an innocent joke Nathan made to his older brother Grant, as Grant was driving through New Mexico towards Arizona to attend their father's memorial service. Grant had mentioned to Nathan that he was heading into Hatch, New Mexico...a town famous for its green chile pepper farms. Nathan responded to Grant, "Be sure to buy us some chiles." Little did we realize that Grant would take this throwaway comment seriously...

My brother-in-law bought us a 20-pound burlap bag full of Hatch green chiles. This picture doesn't even show you half of them (I frantically gave a bunch away soon after receiving them). Amazingly, it only cost him $10 for the whole bag! In grocery stores, the Hatch chiles normally sell for $2.50-3.00 per pound. What a deal! At the same time, I wasn't quite sure what to do with all these chiles. Since I certainly couldn't use them all at once, I decided to roast and puree them, and then freeze them for later use.

It was long, laborious work, but the house smelled so good while they were roasting in the oven! I ended up pureeing about 12-15 pounds worth of chiles, after giving the remainder away to friends. Now I have a bunch of yummy chile puree sitting in my freezer, waiting to be added to soups, casseroles, enchiladas, and more. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

So yeah...we got a lot of chile peppers. But Halloween was coming, and it was pumpkins we really needed next...one for each girl, at least! Where to get them? Well, since Lorelai was the only daughter not going on a field trip to a pumpkin patch, we took her to our charter school's "fall festival," which had a small "pumpkin patch" of its own:

Lorelai ended up with the biggest pumpkin out of all the girls. I guess that's what happens when you get a little older, and can lift heavier objects. Before hauling the pumpkin home, though, the girls had to take a hay ride, which Great Expectations Academy kindly offered at their festival.

 

 

They also got a cute fall-themed picture out of the deal...

Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of Celeste's field trip, as I wasn't able to go with her (she went on Friday the 24th, the day before my birthday). However, she had a great time and brought home a really cute pumpkin. She and Aurora both traveled to the same place for their pumpkins: Buckelew Farm, a big friendly pumpkin patch/corn maze/family fun center located about 45 minutes southwest of Tucson.

Aurora's preschool field trip was a few days after Celeste's (on Monday the 27th); luckily, I was able to accompany her and snap some cute pictures of her and her friends.

Aurora's adorable preschool class, with their adorable teacher Ms. Nichole on the left

 

There is something innocent and adorable about a bunch of tiny kids scrambling around in a big field, searching for a big pumpkin to take home.

 

Since I'd paid for my own admission, I was able to pick out an additional pumpkin for myself, so we got two pumpkins out of this trip! Hooray...now I have an extra pumpkin to cook stuffing inside of for Thanksgiving!

Aurora had a great time looking for pumpkins, and then playing with her buddies Shelby & Taylor afterwards.

Aurora with Taylor (l) and Shelby (r), two of her best buds

In between picking up all our pumpkins, there were a lot of other things to do over my birthday weekend. That Friday the 24th, my girls were invited to not just one, but two Halloween parties. I'll write more about them in my next post, but suffice it to say, it was very draining to shuttle everyone back and forth that night.

My actual birthday was a seriously busy Saturday. For the first time since moving to Sahuarita almost seven years ago, the kids and I decided to attend the town parade, hosted by the local White Elephant (second-hand) store. I've heard nothing but good things about the parade, and we were all curious to check it out.

 

We met up with my friend Rita and two of her kids, Quinton and Riley (her other two children, Tyler and Sophie, were participants in the parade). We found a (sort of) comfy spot on the sidewalk, settled in, and waited for the fun to arrive.

My favorite part was the 5-minute procession of vintage tractors; it reminded me of my grandpa's farm!

There were also vintage cars...

...and cool custom cars...

...and fire trucks...

...and miniature cars driven by Shriners...

...and lots of marching bands!

 I discovered on this day that my girls really love parades. They were clapping and cheering wildly at everything. Their enthusiasm lasted for quite a long time; we were there for more than two hours, and we had to leave just before the parade was over! But they enjoyed every minute of it.

They were very excited when we saw Tyler and Sophie; Lorelai determined then and there that she would find a way to be in the White Elephant parade someday. A kid's gotta dream, I guess. She was also excited to see all the marching bands, due to her new trombone-playing skills.

We were the most excited to see our charter school's acclaimed jazz band cruise along as part of the parade! Seeing so many kids they knew in one spot was thrilling for all three girls. It was another good motivator for Lorelai in practicing the trombone; she now wants to join jazz band someday! I will be interested to see how long this determination lasts.

We had to hurry to leave the parade, because we had more activities to attend. First, we drove to Grandma Barrett's house and met up with Nathan. At this point, we split into two different groups; Lorelai & Aurora stayed with Nathan and Grandma and went on a golfing trip with them. It was a warm afternoon, and they were still tired out from the parade, but they got to ride around on a golf cart so they had a great time anyway. I had to drive Celeste up to the north end of Tucson, to catch the tail end of a friend's birthday party:

The party was held at Pump It Up, the indoor inflatable jumping castle play center. However, by the time we arrived, the "jumping" portion of the party was over. Celeste was crushed (never mind that she's been to Pump It Up two other times in the last six months), but she cheered up a little bit after she had some pizza and birthday cake, and after she got a turn sitting in the inflatable "birthday throne":

She also got to goof off in CostCo with her friend Alissa while Mom had to pick up a few household items after the party:

So I think it all turned out mostly okay.

But the fun wasn't done yet for our kids! That evening, Nathan and I dropped the kids off at our friends the Nielsen's house, so we could go out on an actual birthday date! Normally, the Nielsens are part of a baby-sitting/date-night "swap" with two other couples. However, on this weekend they were very generous and let us add our kids into the mix...partly because it was my birthday, and partly because they wanted to give us a night off after the stressful week we'd had dealing with the death of Nathan's father. They are such good, helpful friends, and it was a favor we really appreciated.

We decided we wanted to go out to dinner, but we never made concrete plans as to where we'd be going. Ultimately, we decided to head for downtown Tucson and see what was available. Since Nathan works in downtown Tucson, he knows a lot of the good places to eat. Finally, after a couple of false starts, we settled on a Vietnamese place called Miss Saigon as a change of pace.

Nathan had never had Vietnamese food before, but he ordered a curry dish that turned out pretty well. I also loved my huge bowl full of noodles, broth, and seafood:

We also both ordered "boba drinks," which were basically crushed ice, non-dairy creamer, and a variety of flavorings. Nathan ordered a mango drink, while I ordered a honeydew melon. As mix-ins, we both got tapioca pearls and coconut jelly. Basically, this made our drinks chewy; every time we slurped up more boba drink through our extra-wide straws, we got a bunch of tapioca pearls in our mouths.

 

The flavor was nice, but the texture was pretty weird. It was a fun experiment though! Overall, the food was very refreshing. After eating Halloween candy and scrounging for snacks for most of the week, a professionally prepared meal was a nice change of pace.

Before eating, we'd sneaked into the Chicago Music Store downtown, which has a nice selection of sheet music. As a birthday present, I spied a book that I'd wanted for a long time:

The Charlie Brown Christmas Special is one of my favorite holiday music albums; the jazz piano is soothing to my soul. Now I can learn to play some of it for myself! It will definitely put me in a good mood this Christmas.

After that, we headed back to Sahuarita, rounded up our exhausted kids, and all collapsed into bed. It had been a very long day, but overall a fun one. I'm glad the whole family was able to have fun, and that I was able to have a little birthday celebration as well.

This is how we all felt by the end of the weekend

But there was to be no rest that week: the very next day (October 26th), the ward choir performed in our Sunday meeting. Since I'm still the ward choir director, I kind of had to be there. Aurora's field trip to the pumpkin patch was the very next day (see above). And the day after that, I had my first-ever experience in jury duty! I was dreading it all month, worried that it would prevent me from fulfilling my Halloween duties. Luckily, I was excused, but it was a narrow miss. At least I got to carpool downtown with my husband and have a nice lunch with him while waiting for the gears of the justice system to grind.

And there was still so much to do before Halloween arrived...