Kosior Fall Fun Festival 2.0

So this weekend was the 2nd Annual Kosior Fall Fun Festival. Of course, it poured all day on Saturday, so the outdoor festivities had to be postponed. However, we made the best of it.

Judy and Lucas came down Friday evening, for what Lucas has determined is their last trip till after D. is born. Because NaNo starts this weekend, I won't be traveling up there on weekends, so it should be quiet.

We had dinner and sat around chatting and planning for an unplanned rainy day. We decided to do some baking. I had found directions for making little mini pumpkin cakes, plus one of the girls from my book club made some delicious pumpkin cookies and sent me the recipe, plus Melissa had brought some pumpkin pie fudge over 2 weekends ago, plus we always make a batch of my mom's donuts every fall. So that was the plan.

Saturday morning, we got moving and did the shopping (got all my book club goodies too, so ladies, be ready!), then came back and baked all day. When I say that we baked all day, what I really mean is that Judy baked all day. I acted as more of a gopher, grabbing ingredients and letting her do all the hard work. This appears to be part of her "nesting" as my sister has never been particularly domestic, nor has she ever shown the slightest inclination towards baking.

Everything came out great and the kitchen smelled SO GOOD. And I managed to keep it clean. I love baking and making a big mess, but to me, the ultimate accomplishment is doing all that AND still managing to come downstairs to a clean kitchen in the morning regardless.

Somehow during the day, we all got into a big debate about what our favorite Billy Joel song was, so we wound up singing along to Billy Joel CDs all afternoon as well.

Sunday morning, we ate donuts and played Yahtzee, and then Melissa came by and we went to Belvedere Plantation for their fall festival, just as we did last year. We did only one trail of the corn maze this year--Lucas's orders that Judy was not going to give birth in a cornfield (not that I considered this a problem). It was fun, but due to all the crappy weather, a lot of the corn had been trampled down and so it was pretty easy to see where you were going. I don't think their heart was really in it, I think they were just humoring me, so I was disappointed, but oh well. At least we did part of it.

Afterwards, we took in the pig races, which was real cute. Those pigs were so funny running around the little track. Our section's pig won the last two races, which felt so good, considering our first pig got out of the gate, thought better of the whole thing, and started running back the way he came. But he got the hang of it and finished dead last by about 15 seconds. So cute!

Then we took the hayride to the pumpkin patch and picked pumpkins. I don't do anything halfway--I wanted PUMPKINS. I found a real nice specimen, so I grabbed him for the General and then found a second one that looked quite nice as well. It was all I could do to stagger back to the haywagon with those things, but finally I was able to, and we got back to the main part of the farm and got a wheelbarrow for all of us to tuck our pumpkins in. I noted at that time that my wrist was feeling a bit funny, but I figured it was just because the pumpkins were awkward--the big one didn't have much of a stem.

After a nice snack of kettlecorn and apple cider slushies, we checked out. My big pumpkin weighed in at 25 pounds!!!! The littler one was a respectable 17 pounds! That is a lot of pumpkin to be hauling. I wound up pulling the car up, because my arm was really hurting by then, and it turned out I managed to pull a muscle in my left arm. Go figure.

We got home and the General came downstairs, flush with a Patriots victory. I started cleaning out the big pumpkin, thinking that it would be much lighter to carry afterwards. WRONG! That sucker had walls at least 2 inches thick! It took me a good while to hack through it and even a good while longer to clean it out. There were pumpkin seeds everywhere--we all had good sized pumpkins. It was crazy.

The General wanted his pumpkin to look "surprised" or "frightened"--I can't remember which and looking at the pumpkin now, it looks both surprised and frightened--so I did a passable job (I think anyway) of making the pumpkin look that way. Then I got to cleaning out my pumpkin, which I wound up letting Lucas carve because I was wiped out after cleaning that sucker out. It is a traditional smiling jack-o-lantern, with triangle eyes and a smiling mouth full of teeth.

Both pumpkins came out great.

And then it was time to pack up and head out. The great "Big Broadcast" Halloween spectacular was going to come on, so we wanted to haul ass to a spot where there was good reception before it came on--which is all of about 6 miles from the house.

Got back to Judy and Lucas's, and he must have been feeling his oats, because he said he felt the decorating choices were a bit "ghetto". So we worked on getting the artwork re-hung, and then Judy and I put the bedding that Michael and I had bought D. into the crib. Judy got kind of sappy at that point, saying she knew it had been hard and she wished she could have made it easier, but I pretty well had to cut her off because any type of talk like that gets me supremely pissed off and I was having a nice time. So we just let it go. I let her know that due to NaNoWriMo and then D's arrival, this would be my last night up there except for staff meeting days, which she seemed OK with. And then it was bed time.

So that was this year's fall fun festival. I'll try to get some pictures up soon for everyone to see the pumpkins, which all came out really, really cute. I took my half of the goodies to work yesterday for a little party, and it was gone in no time. Everyone absolutely loved all of it. The fudge was gone before lunch, and the cookies were gone in no time as well. I left the cake there when I left, so I'm not sure what happened with them, but I'm willing to bet they didn't last too long either!