The Carving of The Great Pumpkin

October 18, 2013 By

On a whim, Jamie put his giant 1,220-pound pumpkin up for sale on Craigslist a couple of weeks ago. He never really expected to sell it. His asking price was high and not too many people have their own forklift and flatbed required to haul it away.

But he did get an interesting response from Michelle Barnett: she was dying to carve it. For free!

And so she drove down from Fort Collins every day this week (about an hour drive) and worked in the cold, rain, sun and even snow flurries. She was so patient, passionate and probably spent 20 hours carving the beast.

Before:

The very beginning

After:

The (mostly) finished pumpkin

Michelle was a hit with our neighbors who were constantly stopping to watch her work and someone on the next street even invited her for coffee.

Ask me if a neighbor has ever invited me over for coffee (never mind that I don’t touch the stuff).

But if I want to ante up on my popularity, it would appear I need to grow…and carve a giant pumpkin.

Filed Under: Humor, Jamie, pumpkins

The Hopeful Start of Volleyball’s Glory Days

October 16, 2013 By

I am a firm believer every kid needs a sport as a way to stay active.

We’ve been through a laundry list of them with Hadley and though a few have stuck, most have gone to the wayside. She definitely excels in individual sports and I had almost given up team sports altogether until I recently got called as the volleyball coach of our young women at church.

I was thrilled to connect with my former passion. Once upon a time, I lived and breathed volleyball in high school. In 12th grade, I was our school MVP and even landed in the Calgary Herald’s Hall of Fame with my picture in the newspaper. I went on to TA some classes in college and played in adult leagues in Salt Lake City.

I figured I could relive my glory years, brush up on my skills and impart my great wisdom upon these girls. Until after our first practice where my long-dormant plantar fasciitis flared up so badly after that I could barely walk for two days.

Glory days, over.

But I was most excited about bringing Hadley to volleyball practice with me to see if she took to it. And taken to it she has. In fact, I was pretty shocked just how good she was from the get-go so enrolled her in our some community volleyball classes with a couple of her church friends. I figured they’d just have weekly practices and be done with it.

But noooooooo. I was dismayed when I found out they also had weekly tournaments–not just one game but several back-to-back, taking up most of our Saturday mornings.

Because we’re not busy enough with Bode’s soccer games and my volleyball.

I’m all for getting in as much playing time as you can during the season but if you know volleyball, you know that it takes a good while to build your skill set, hence the reason why most programs don’t start until around fifth grade. And games really shouldn’t be in the formula until you have a firm foundation.

She had her first games a couple of weeks ago. I had a good chuckle when she emerged from her room wearing her sparkly sequined leggings (nothing like making a statement on Day 1).

The games were predictably painful but fun. Someone would get up to serve. Either 1) They’d miss or 2) Get it over and the other team would not be able to bump it back.

Out of the seven games they played, there were only a couple of rallies. Hadley’s team only won once and Bode couldn’t keep his eyes off the game.

On his DS, that is. Can’t blame the kid. It was a long morning.

But I was proud of how well Hadley did. At this age, they let the girls serve a lot closer to the net. You’d think that would help most of them get it over but nooooo. Hadley was the most consistent server in the group and out of probably 20 serves, she only missed one.

I’d say that’s the start of a promising future in volleyball.

I’ll be the one limping behind her.

Filed Under: Hadley, Humor, Uncategorized Tagged With:

Spring Kite Farm: A bean-stomping, hard-working, manatee-baseball-playing great trip!

October 15, 2013 By

Last month, I volunteered to chaperone Hadley’s three-day class camping trip to Spring Kite Farm in Fort Collins, Colo. The conditions were idyllic, juxtaposed against their visit to the farm last spring where a torrential downpour was unleashed on them.

I wasn’t too sad about missing out on that one.

Both sets of my grandparents were farmers and weekends and summers were spent on my Grandpa Wilde’s farm. I was a city girl who had little/no interest in farming. Even today, though I love beautiful, lush gardens, my thumb is more black than green. I’ve left the gardening to Jamie and the kids.

But staying on Spring Kite Farms ignited something within me that maybe, just maybe, I could get into this. The couple who lease the land–Meagan and Michael–aren’t what you’d envision as farmers. Hip, young and good-looking, they are passionate about their biodynamic and organic styleompanion planting techniques. Spring Kite is a CSA (Community Supporting Agriculture) where members buy a share before the start of the growing season. Mike and Meagan also sell to area farmer’s markets. We found the whole thing fascinating.

I really love Waldorf schools’ experiential model of teaching so this wasn’t a leisurely field trip. For three days, they worked hard picking potatoes, tomatoes, beets, watermelon, squash and doing farm chores like feeding the pigs, turkeys and alpacas. Every kid should work on a farm for a few days to learn what real work looks like and the amount of sacrifice it takes to provide sustenance to survive.We ate like royalty every day. I should know.  I was one of two parents who cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner for all 30 of us. It was exhausting but so delicious as we were able to pop over to the gardens when we needed another ingredient. One night, I grilled potatoes with leeks, onions and olive oil and fresh herbs. Another night, we made fresh vegetable chili. And we setup chopping stations for the kids to make their own salsa.

Fortunately, we didn’t have any trips to the hospital so I’ll count that one as a win.

We learned about sustainability and the fertility cycles in the most surreal of settings.

And there was still plenty of time to combine work and play. This bean stomp turned into one big party.

What do you do when you don’t have any sporting equipment? You take Ryan’s stuffed manatee Herbert and invent Manatee Baseball!

Note: Hadley’s seal Zoe was used as the ball. No stuffed marine animals were injured in the process.

Hadley’s favorite part was playing with Tomato, the farm’s dog.

I enjoyed the fireside chats, readings, s’mores and banjo jams.
Most of the kids were really great. Best of all was Hadley and I really bonded and her friends fell in love with me calling me “mom.”When I stopped for Slurpees on the drive home, I got several adoption requests.

It doesn’t take much with these girls.

As for the boys, they were a hoot. Things you never thought you’d say to 10-yr-old boys: “Hey dudes, let’s not body slam the porta-potty when your buddy is in it, OK?”

At one point, Dell (one of my fellow chaperones) left to get some medicine. I was hanging out in our cooking area with one of the boys, J.D., when he smelled something burning and added, “it smells like my grandparent’s house.” I’m sure they’d be thrilled to hear that.

We discovered that Dell had left a dutch oven of blueberry muffin mix cooking on the camp stove. I immediately removed it and was able to salvage it except for the very bottom, which was burned. When the kids came back for a mid-day snack, they were delighted to eat it but these boys took it one step further: they devoured the charred remains.

I think Wyatt’s face says it all.

My fave moment was when Hadley was packing up and discovered her brother (who had used the sleeping bag a couple of months ago) had left his dirty underwear and PJs at the bottom.

Not surprisingly, it was her least favorite moment.

We were excited to return home and shower but I’m not sure our boys were very happy to see us as evidenced by the phone conversation I had with Jamie on day two.

Husband: Bode was early to school today.

Me: Why?

Him: We went and got doughnuts.

Me: Doughnuts today, Chuck E. Cheese last night. He’s not going to want me to come home.

Him: It has its advantages.

Filed Under: Bode, Humor, Jamie Tagged With: ,

How we were big winners and losers at our local pumpkin weigh-off

October 14, 2013 By

Though Jamie has moved onto bigger and better things in the pumpkin world, we feel a sense of obligation to attend our small city’s annual scarecrow festival. After all, this was where Jamie got his first blue ribbon that fueled his obsession.

He hasn’t brought his pumpkin to this particular weigh-off for several years because a forklift and large scale are needed to remove and weigh his pumpkins, neither of which this competition has. Even bringing the kids’ pumpkin caused its own set of problems because this was their biggest ever and took six of us to lift it into the car.

And yes, our neighbors will be avoiding us for quite some time.

As we pulled up to the pumpkin unloading zone, we saw one of the longtime event organizers who has always praised Jamie very highly. But he didn’t initially realize it was us, causing Jamie to haughtily say, “Does he not know a celebrity when he sees one?

Big head much?

But Jamie is a local celebrity in the growing community and usually comes away with several proteges who grow for the first time the following year.

Admittedly a huge pet peeve at this weigh-off is parents who set their kids loose on the pumpkins. In fact, I got in an argument with a woman last year who, even after I asked her very nicely to not let her kid crawl over the pumpkin because it was easily damaged, she released a barrage of obscenities along the lines of “My kid can do whatever the #*$&#*$&# he pleases and I should mind my own #$&*$# business.”

To avoid any such altercations, this year I let the pumpkin do the talking with a few helpful signs.

It also helped that as the kids visited all the fun booths, I was left behind to be the chief pumpkin babysitter a.k.a. bouncer.

When it came time for the competition, the kids’ 429-beast (s)quashed both the adult and children’s division so the organizers weighed it last. They were  awarded a blue ribbon and a $50 garden center gift certificate, which they happily traded with Jamie for a fast-food meal. He was one proud papa.

However, there have been some rather disturbing occurrences at our house lately. Last week, I posted the following Facebook update:

I just found a pumpkin seed on my side of the bed. I suspect this is The Pumpkin Man’s subtle way of replacing me.

It was then confirmed that Jamie is slowing replacing each one of us. Following the weigh-off, we loaded the pumpkin in the car and it wasn’t until after we’d driven away that Bode noticed we’d left Hadley behind.

She’s already turning into a pumpkin

This means Bode is next. Pray for him.

Filed Under: Bode, Hadley, Humor, pumpkins Tagged With: , ,

Our debut as professional pie contest eaters at Four Mile Historic Park

October 9, 2013 By

Four years ago when Jamie was in Portland visiting his buddy at a pumpkin weigh-off, the kids and I fell in love with Four Mile History Park’s annual Great Pumpkin Harvest Festival. This rustic 12-acre historic oasis and the site of Denver’s oldest house is a charming throwback to yesteryear. Scarecrow making. Caramel apples and apple cider. Pioneer games. Horse-drawn wagon rides. Museum tours. Wood-burning stove cookie baking and Native American fry bread. Mountain man encampment. Gold panning. Historic blacksmithing demonstrations.

I loved it all and have been dying to go back but last weekend was our first opportunity while Jamie was at another weigh-off.

Pumpkin ring toss

Very heated musical chairs cakewalk

New obsession: stilt walking

 

Apple cider doughnuts I’ve dreamed about for four years

Four Mile Historic Park had pumpkins for purchase in a cute little pumpkin patch but we couldn’t be bothered.

“We don’t need to stop there, Hadley. We’re pumpkin snobs.”

“What’s a snob?”

“Someone who thinks they’re better than someone else.”

“Why yes, yes we are pumpkin snobs.”

But there’s nothing better than pie-eating contests and darn it if Hadley and Bode didn’t hit the jackpot by being two of the lucky 15 kids who signed up.

There was some stiff competition: a lot of hungry-looking teenagers. Bode looks like he’s praying in this picture. It worked. At least it did when he figured out it’s better not to lick the berry pie…

and just jump right on it. Little dude never looked back.

Hadley, on the other hand, started strong by smashing her face in her apple pie and ingesting it. About a minute later, she came up for air.
“Mom, I can’t breathe! I have pie up my nose”

“Breathe later, eat now.”

I have a future as a competitive pie-eating coach. My first rule: do not slurp the apples like a straw.

Or look at your competition. Bode lost precious seconds here.

But  he needn’t have worried because he totally beat Hadley who ended up looking like this.

I don’t think she’ll want apple pie anytime soon.

But we had a blast and you’d better believe we’ll be training for next year.

Filed Under: Bode, Colorado, Foodie, Hadley, Humor, pumpkins Tagged With: ,

When a Woman Loves a Man: The Pumpkin Version

October 4, 2013 By

I’ll admit it: I rarely go out to the pumpkin patch. I venture over there a few times a year to help Jamie with a few tasks but mostly, I watch the pumpkin’s progress from our porch or bedroom window. And I hear about the pumpkin 24-7 so it’s not like I’m absent from the process.

But the day of the pumpkin party, Jamie had a request: could I please come help him take the pumpkin’s final measurements? If you will recall, it was raining. Hard.

“Just wear some shoes you don’t mind getting muddy,” he counseled.

I did just that. As we were walking out to the patch, he noticed them.

“But those are my shoes you’re wearing.”

“Yup.”

Smart wife, non?

You haven’t lived until you’ve measured a giant pumpkin in the rain. He uses an over-sized tape measure and barks orders of where to hold it to get it exactly right. The pumpkin was wet and slippery so it took several tries but we finally measured the beast and emerged muddy and soaking wet.

The takeaway? Greater love hath no wife than she who measures a giant pumpkin with her husband in the rain.

=====

In case you missed it:

Drumroll: And the Great Pumpkin’s Weight is….

Like a giant pumpkin to the slaughter: a pumpkin party to remember

Stanley the Pumpkin Does Colorado Schools and the Fun Run

Recipe: Delicious Pumpkin Pie Crisp Bars

 

Filed Under: Humor, Jamie, pumpkins

Stanley the Pumpkin Does Colorado and the Fun Run!

October 2, 2013 By

Before we move the Great Pumpkin onto our driveway where it stays until Halloween, both the kids beg for us to bring it to school. On Monday, Jamie and I showed it to Bode’s second grade class and it was a hoot.  Bode talked about how much the pumpkins weigh, how he grew them and then announced. “OK, I will take nine questions” and then pointed to various kids with their hands raised. At the end of our Q&A, he brusquely said, “OK, I will take two more comments,” and then wrapped it up.

Little dude has a future as a teacher. Or a dictator.

For the second year in a row, we were able to take the pumpkins to Hadley’s school’s fun run. Last year, I hung out eating bonbons cheering for Hadley while she ran by as I talked to my friend Aime. This year, I volunteered to run it with her, not realizing exactly what I was committing to. I mean, it was a fun run so surely it was just that, right?

Warm-up!

Turns out it wasn’t just a few laps around the park but the challenge was to get in as many laps as you could during the hour-long run. Back in the day, I was Miss Long Distance. My elementary school would have Run for Your Life where we’d race around the fields collecting Popsicle sticks for each lap and every year, Paul MacEachern and I dominated.

Those days are long, long over.

This was the longest I’ve run on my knee since my surgery but I have to tell you how impressed I was with Hadley. The first several laps she didn’t stop at all and as we got deeper and deeper into the hour, we’d do brief walking and water breaks but she kept plugging along while many of her classmates stopped. If I hadn’t been there with her, I would have quit after about a half hour when my knee started bugging me but I kept going and she later said she wouldn’t have done as many laps if I hadn’t been there. Ever since her field trip last week, she’s been much more appreciative of me and commented, “you’re one of the only moms who’s running. That’s really cool!”

And how I know she’s mine: Every time we’d run up to a boy, she’d very sweetly rub it in by saying “good job!” and then blow past him.

In the end, she did 19 laps–the most of any girl in her grade and more than most of the boys. We ran just short of five miles and she blazed ahead of me on our final lap. Though she’s really athletic, she does more solo sports like skiing and hiking so having a measurable success was a huge ego boost for her.

Having a giant pumpkin to show off to all her friends at school didn’t hurt the ego, either.

 

 

Filed Under: Bode, Hadley, Humor, pumpkins

(Drumroll) And The Great Pumpkin’s Weight Is….

October 1, 2013 By

After a thoroughly exhausting, fun and wet pumpkin party, the day of the weigh-off was even more chaotic as we juggled Bode’s soccer and my volleyball game (thanks to Aunt Lisa for coming to the rescue with rides!)

Jamie says he loves driving the Great Pumpkin to the weigh-off because of all the stares and cheers he receives.

And who can blame them with this cargo?

The festivities are at Jared’s Nursery in Littleton and have grown from a little podunk weigh-off to a veritable harvest festival with a haunted house, face painting, mazes, bouncy castles, games and food trucks.

But still, the highlight is always checking out the giant gourds.

It feels a bit like you’re wandering around the Land of the Lost with these 100-pound pears. And of course, all those pumpkins.

I felt really happy for Jamie because, for the first time, his pumpkin was among the largest and was the one people singled out for pictures.

Of course, we had to pose for our requisite family photo with the other woman. Though in this case, she’s a man named Stanley in honor of my dad and Jamie’s best friend. My friend Fiona called us the “Mannings of the pumpkin growing world.”

I’m sure that means we must be millionaires.

The kids’ division was first. Early in the season, Hadley lost her pumpkin so they both grew Bode’s pumpkin, which is just a nice way of saying he did most of the work but she wants part of the credit.

Regardless, they blew away the other kids and won with their biggest pumpkin ever: 429.5 pounds! It went 15 percent heavier than its measurements.

Up next was the adult division. Jamie’s pumpkin developed a small crack five weeks prior, which automatically disqualified it from competition but he still wanted to weigh it. It was measuring out to be over 1,400 pounds, which would have beat the 1,308-pound Colorado state record.

But it wasn’t to be so. Though Stanley was a beast, he went “light,” which in pumpkin terms means he wasn’t as thick on the inside so turned out to be about 200 pounds lighter than Jamie had hoped.

A man and his giant pumpkin

But 1,220 pounds is nothing to be sad about. Stanley was a few hundred pounds heavier than Jamie’s personal best and was one of the biggest grown in Colorado this year. His friend Joe ended up growing a 1,478-pound pumpkin and won the competition. Which just means there’s an even bigger goal for next year.

Congrats to my cute family on a job well grown!

 

 

Filed Under: Bode, Family, Hadley, Humor, Jamie, pumpkins Tagged With: ,

Like a Giant Pumpkin to the Slaughter: A Pumpkin Party to Remember

September 30, 2013 By

Last week was a blur as I chaperoned Hadley’s three-day camping trip and returned home to throw our annual pumpkin party the next day, followed by the chaotically fun giant pumpkin weigh-off.

Translation: I barely slept.

We always invite oodles of friends and setup the party in our backyard, which, between that and our neighbor’s lot where Jamie grows the pumpkin, there is plenty of room to roam. But this year, we had a further complication: lots of rain. We have a good-sized four-bedroom house but it is certainly not big enough to comfortably house 60+ people but that’s exactly what we did.

That was only the tip of our muddy iceberg that night.

I expected people to un-RSVP due to the inclement weather and, if we’re being honest here, I kind of hoped they would so we would have a more manageable crowd. But we have wonderful, supportive friends (yeah!) and a deluge of them waited until the very last minute to say they were coming (not yeah!)

The motivator was probably my Facebook post that announced the party was still on despite the rain with the promise of mud wrestling in the pumpkin patch.

We told our friends to dress for the weather and that they did. Though Meredith went a wee bit overboard with her dorky umbrellas.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Admission to the pumpkin party is your favorite pumpkin dish and we had two tables full of pumpkin rolls, pies, cookies, pumpkin seed guacamole, cinnamon rolls, cakes, dips, pumpkin-spiced hot chocolate and so much  more. I made two new treats that will become permanent fixtures–pumpkin magic cookie bars and pumpkin oatmeal bars (recipes forthcoming). It was one of my favorite spreads ever.

And I’m not just talking about the middle-aged spread I had after sampling them all.

Usually when it’s time to cut the pumpkin off the vine, everyone races out to the pumpkin patch but we had three kinds of people.

1) The “been there, done that” types who opted to stay inside.

Note: My unsupportive children were numbered among them. The Pumpkin Man may disown them for this major trespass.

2) The “I’m intrigued but I don’t want to get wet” types. These people crammed inside near the back door and the more interested sorts stood on the deck so they were able to dash back indoors if they got too soaked.

3) The “I’m all in” types.

These hearty  souls were rewarded with quite the show and major complications surfaced because:

1) It was raining. In case you’d forgotten that.

2) It was muddy.

3) Stanley the Pumpkin weighs several hundred pounds more than Jamie’s previous gourds.

Usually, Jamie and a few of his buddies adjust lifting straps around the pumpkin, they attach it to the forklift and the machine very carefully lifts it off its bed of sand onto the flatbed trailer while the crowd cheers.

But this year, there was muck everywhere so the backhoe could not get enough traction to lift the pumpkin out of the patch. After several failed attempts (and a backhoe that literally almost tipped over from the weight of the pumpkin), Jamie and his pit crew changed strategies. They  knocked down one of the poles supporting the hail netting so the backhoe could go in at another angle.

As we watched the drama unfold, one of our drenched-to-the-bone neighbor’s daughters raved to me, “This is your greatest pumpkin party yet! The rain! The mud! And they might not even get the pumpkin out of there!”

She sure has a differ view of greatness.

After what seemed like an eternity, the deed was done. Jamie and his buddies looked like the Swamp Things as they emerged from the patch and I was horrified when I saw one of them had blood all over his face.

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure. I was trying to push the backhoe when it got stuck and I got bloodied up.”

It was the Great Pumpkin’s first sacrificial lamb. But I’m sure it will not be the last.

Be sure to read the details of the weigh-off and the Great Pumpkin’s final weight!

Filed Under: Humor, Jamie, pumpkins Tagged With: , ,

The List: Outtakes from a Marriage

September 25, 2013 By

Last week, I was crazy-busy with a deadline, making dozens of cookies for the local flood relief command center, doing laundry and dinner preparations were on the forefront of my mind because we had invited the woman I visit teach over for FHE as well as a new couple in the ward. Jamie, like the saving angel offered:

“Do you need me to go to the store?””

“Yes, you would be a lifesaver, THANK YOU! Let me write a list of a few things.”

“OK.” I wrote the list and handed it to him.

“Oh wait. I just remembered something else.”

“OK.”

A few minutes later, after I’d made a double-batch of cookies, I realized I was out of brown sugar. I was remiss when I thought he had already left for the store. But then, WINNINGLY, I spotted him in the backyard!

“I just remembered something else: brown sugar.”

“You see, this is why I hate going to the store for you. You keep adding things to the list. And you already put brown sugar down.”

I should be married to myself; I can anticipate my own needs before I even know about them.

So, off he went to the store and I had a conference call. A few minutes, I heard him try to beep through on my phone. I didn’t pick up; what else could he possibly need? I had pretty thoroughly expounded upon everything with the list.

I grabbed a second phone and tried to call him back while juggling my other line. He didn’t pick up.

When he arrived home with a few grocery bags, I queried:

“I tried calling you back. Why did you call?”

“I lost the list.”

Filed Under: Humor, Jamie
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