california bucket list: pumpkin patch

Kristin writing:
I've always loved the fall.  It's my favorite season, hands down.  I love the hot apple cider, hot chocolate, smell of a crackling fire, changing colors of leaves, and the coolness in the air.  And I REALLY love pumpkin patches.

We were really fortunate to live just down the road from an amazing pumpkin patch in Dixon, California.  The place is absolutely huge, and there's no limit to the varieties of pumpkins and gourds that you can find.  They also boast the Guinness Book of World Records largest corn maze!  Every year, I would drag Nathan out to that pumpkin patch - we'd pick out our pumpkins for that year (one for carving, one for baking) and then make our way through the gigantic corn maze.

This year, we invited a few friends from our Bible study to go with us.  We unfortunately didn't make it there before the corn maze closed (no, I didn't cry...just almost), but we still got to roam the pumpkin patch together and have a great time.  Here are some of my favorite pictures from that evening.

Yes, I like to pose with every pumpkin that I think is cute.  No, it doesn't make sense.

Monica (left) and Stacia (middle) - we were all pregnant!  

More posing with cute pumpkins.  I wanted to take this one home with me, but Nathan said no.  He had a valid point...we were moving in about a week.

Stacia and Justin.  They were expecting their baby to arrive any day.  Justin was attempting to look just as pregnant as Stacia. :)

The three of us picked pumpkins approximately the size of our unborn babies!  I begged and begged, and Nathan let me keep my "baby".

It's true...I like just about all pumpkins.

Ed and Monica were really into these cuties because they looked like the "one-up" mushrooms on the old-school Nintendo Mario Brothers games.

Oh, Ed.

Posing again with my "baby".  It was such a cute little pumpkin!  I'm so glad Nathan let me keep it.

Even though we had just gone out for a steak dinner, Monica was still hungry.  I blame it on pregnancy hormones. :)

This gourd looked like a duck.  I wanted to buy it as well, but I settled for just a picture.

Monica and Ed found Mario!!!

 My "baby"!

So, you ask...what did you end up doing with your "baby"?  Well, it rode in the car all the way from California to Plano, decorated our mantle for a few weeks, and then we ate it.  We're cannibals.

Our marbled pumpkin cheesecake tasted good, though! :)

california bucket list - corndogs and apples, oh my!

As much as we were ready to move from California and back toward our families, there were a lot of things we loved about where we lived.  When we found out that Nathan got the job in Dallas, we made a "bucket list" of things to do before we left.

One of our favorite things about Davis was the Farmer's Market.  The Farmer's Market (believe it or not) is one of the main things that drew Kristin to graduate school at UC Davis, and we often loved to walk there during good weather to have a picnic and people watch.  Nathan's going to miss the bolani guys...Kristin's going to miss the corn dogs.

She got to have one last corn dog before they left, and it was delicious!  She wouldn't let them sell her one that had been precooked a few minutes earlier.  She demanded a fresh-dipped, fresh cooked one and enjoyed every second of it.

Very unflattering picture here...just focus on how delicious the corn dog looks.

Another of our favorite places is Apple Hill near Placerville.  Every year, when the leaves start to change colors and apples start weighing down the trees, we head up to Apple Hill for a morning of looking at crafts, taste testing apple butters and apple wines, and eating lots of apply goodness!

This year, the first thing we ate...apple cider donuts.  So good.

Kristin got to smell her favorite variety of apple, the Gravenstein.  It's not a type of apple we've seen outside of California, but it is by far the best.  It literally smells like apple cider and makes a great apple crisp.

Then there were all of the buildings and stalls with crafts!  These buildings feature Gooseberry Patch items, so of course Kristin has to go check them out.

We stopped by the pond to watch a little boy fish for the first time.  They had that pond so well stocked that he caught his fish within a matter of minutes.

And of course, we couldn't forget to sample fudge at the Fudge Factory!

We ended our morning with lunch and a piece of buttermilk apple pie.

Yes, it's true...our bucket list has just as much to do with food we like to eat as it does with places we like to go.  :)

pumpkin carving

As we do every year for Halloween, we decided to carve a pumpkin.  Normally, we would go to a pumpkin patch.  In Plano, the only "pumpkin patches" we found were in church parking lots.  The churches would have a section of the parking lot roped off, some hay scattered around, and pumpkins lying on the concrete.  It was really funny!

We decided to go to the "pumpkin patch" at a Methodist church down the street from us.  It was an odd experience, walking through a parking lot to pick out a pumpkin, but the proceeds went to support their youth program.  Here's the one we picked!

Nathan started by cutting out the lid and emptying the contents.  We were too lazy to save any seeds for roasting this year...made the process go a lot faster!

Then, we taped up the design Nathan created and began punching it out with a tack.

 

Then...we carved!

And here it is...this year's design...

Winnie the Pooh!  Watch out for the bee!!!