The Little Professor Picks a Pumpkin
Greetings to everyone.
Last Friday, Rebecca used one of her new-found super powers as a member of a local MOPS group to score us a date night. The MOPS group does babysitting from 6 to 9 one Friday a month. We took Xavier in for the evening (we were not the only ones dropping off children either! Others were making use of this same super power). He enjoys playing in the toddler room when Rebecca makes the biweekly meetings, and he gets to interact with other children his age, which he enjoys. (He does a lot of toddler-watching)
Rebecca and I took in an quiet evening at a local restaurant we have been wanting to try these last few months. After dinner, we decided to spend our last ninety minutes choosing a pumpkin from the Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield.
It was dark, about 7:30 at night, and the air held a crisp autumn chill. As this was a spur of the moment activity, neither of us were prepared to be in the weather, but off we drove just the same (fortunately, I pack emergency clothing in the trunk of my car).
It took us longer to get there than we thought, and the pumpkin area was closed. We decided to return Saturday with Xavier and do the corn maze also. So, Saturday, we packed Xavier and headed south. From the highway, we noted the place was a zoo and the line to get in stretched several hundred feet. We bailed and found some place to eat lunch. Once home again, we researched pumpkin patches, but found none near us, except the Chatfield one.
Both Xavier and Rebecca suffered a cold, so we did not try on Sunday. Today, Rebecca packed Xavier up and both went to see a doctor; neither could breathe well. We were having concerns about pneumonia. Along the way, Rebecca passed a street corner having a few thousand pumpkins on the ground. So, this afternoon, after his nap, we headed over to pick out a pumpkin.
The pumpkin patch (actually a large, straw-covered area of grass where the pumpkins are trucked in) is operated and benefits Habitat for Humanity. They have provided this "patch" for the past fifteen years, located at Garrison and Alameda on the grounds of Colorado Christian University. The selection is extensive and quite varied. The people are friendly, and the cause is worth the dollar per inch in circumference.
When we arrived, one of the workers, an older gentleman, walked over to greet us and to give Xavier a little sticker. Xavier used his sticker to mark the pumpkin he favored the most. Above, he examines several from a pile of Xavier-sized pumpkins. You can see his sticker already affixed to the pumpkin directly in front of the space between the two he holds on to.
Here, he examines another one. He's gone back to it several times, and even pulled his sticker from the previous choice and placed it on this pumpkin.
Looking over to the workers in the tent, Xavier announces his choice. "This one! Do I get a discount? I'm under 2."