October Begins and so do the Halloween Festivities!

So I must admit: I've never been a fan of Halloween. I get scared easily, so don't watch horror movies and such (although I do like scary books. Go figure), and I simply just never saw the point of it: dressing up in silly costumes and having kids asking strangers for candy; it all just seems strange and pointless to me. That being said, it's only the start of October, and I can already see how much Australia misses the point of Halloween. As with many other things, Halloween in Australia is just a big gimmick of something American and completely misses the point.

I am usually finding weekend activities for the three of us to partake in via Facebook. And browsing around just these upcoming events has really opened my eyes to what Halloween's about here in the US. And from what I can gather, it's more a festival of harvest time, hence the pumpkins. There are lots of events this month on little farms where kids can pick pumpkins, play in hay bales, go for tractor rides and other activities relating to the country life and harvesting produce. And the spooky theme seems to accompany that as secondary whimsical decoration. I have no idea where the spooky thing came from, but that's not all that Halloween's about here.

On Sunday we went to Clancy's Pumpkin Patch! I've never seen so many pumpkins in my life! I wasn't really too sure what to expect, but we met up with some friends who have a son who's a bit younger than Mr 2, so that was also nice. When we arrived, we could just see lots of hay and pumpkins! It was about a 20 minute drive from our apartment in the city, so it's not like we were in the middle of nowhere, but it sort of felt like we were! Hay was piled high, adorned in pumpkins of various sizes and even colours (mostly orange and white). There were also scarecrow-type decorations hung up with friendly faces. Kids were running all over the place. We were basically walking through rows and rows of pumpkins and hay! 

Once we'd met up with our friends, we grabbed a ride on the tractor where you could pay $4 a person and sit in some hay in the back trailer and ride around a bit! Mr 2 was very unsure of it all. He's not really the type of kid who jumps right into things; he takes his time to take things in and just adjust to new places. But he relaxed after a little while and enjoyed exploring a bit: checking out the pumpkins, the Autumn leaves all over the ground and the dirt. LOL.

I like little events like these: they give you a small appreciation for country life and life outside of the big cities.

There were also a couple of small references to the upcoming Thanksgiving, just little signs that said things like "give thanks" etc. I don't know a lot about Thanksgiving; only what Robert's told me (he learned quite a bit when he spent some years of his childhood growing up in this country). I feel like October is really the beginning of holiday season in this country.

We probably would have hung around a bit longer, but we got rained out! It was the first rain that SF's had since about May, apparently! Plus, Mr 2 was getting a bit tired and grumpy. So we picked a couple of pumpkins to take home and made a run for it! Needless to say, I felt like something pumpkin flavoured, so I had to find us the closest Starbucks as I'm currently addicted to their pumpkin spice latte (I know, it's terrible: I've become addicted to an American coffee. Struth!). Plus, we now also have a couple of little pumpkins sitting next to our TV as our Halloween/October decorations. LOL. I've seen some cute decorations in Target recently, so I may buy a couple to keep the pumpkins company. Haha!

Anyway, as usual, I leave you with some photos of our recent "adventure". :-)

xoxo

Just a few of the 1000s of pumpkins...

I feel like this one is really channelling my Dad/the Count from Sesame Street. LOL!

These dudes were just hanging out on trees and in bushes.