We know it's November, but Happy Halloween!!

Once we managed to get through the celebrations of birthdays in early October we could spend the rest of the month focusing on pumpkins and costumes. Fortunately we had more than enough opportunities to do so. Our great pumpkin journey starts at Happy Jack's, a family run farm in Frankfort. It was our first visit to the place and we really enjoyed it.



The occasion was a costume party hosted by our friends the Johnsons. Callie was excited to wear her cupcake costume and Reese looked dashing as a strawberry. Apparently Sarah was hungry when she picked out this year's costumes. The food items were accompanied by Jesse from Toy Story and your friendly neighborhood chicken.


We had a variety of activities during the course of the afternoon, including a wagon ride out to the pumpkin patch. Callie spent a while looking for a good pumpkin and was ready to carry it wherever it needed to go. I bet you have never seen a cupcake struggling to carry a pumpkin before, have you? That day and on Halloween this cupcake was up to all sorts of tricks.




Other activities that filled the day included face painting, walking through a haunted forest, eating lunch, and horsing around. As you can imagine, the horsing around took up most of the time. One of the kids' favorite activities involved taking turns pulling around the little red wagon loaded with children and pumpkins. It was easier for some. Poor Mason had a bit of a tough time trying to make some headway with three girls and two pumpkins. But he certainly tried.


As might be expected, Happy Jack's also had a wide variety of animals on the premises. Both Callie and Reese were entranced by the sheep, pigs, and goats. Here we see the two girls and John standing by the fence after feeding one of the goats. They could have stayed there all day. It's also important to mention that as we were leaving the farm in our car, we were followed by an ostrich. They certainly are big birds.

We could not pass up an opportunity to get a good picture of Reese surrounded by pumpkins. So here it is. She is looking mighty cute here, isn't she? Truth be told, the cuteness lasted only moments and then she let us know she was done posing for pictures for the day.



All in all, it was great to find another family owned farm in the area that we can enjoy and visit throughout the year. You can just never have enough family owned farms in your life, that's our motto.

It has taken us a while to make it happen, but we finally managed to get back to Keeneland for breakfast with the works. It's funny. We always seem to pick the coldest mornings to visit the track. But this was a special day because it was the Saturday before Halloween. We not only got the treat of watching the horses go through their training runs, but we also got to witness a visit from the Headless Horseman as he made his way through the paddock. Very cool.

Callie and Reese were all bundled up so they were prepared for the attempt to capture them from all different angles. Reese definitely loved this visit to Keeneland. Her first visit, this past April, involved rain and a lost set of car keys. So this time around it may have been cold, but that was the worst of it. She got excited every time a horse came by. And Callie has never lost her enthusiasm for the ponies.


Now just because we went to Happy Jack's earlier in the month it did not mean we could bypass some of our other favorite spots. So off we headed to Evan's Orchard to get a few more pumpkins, a few more pictures, and a whole afternoon at their playground.



Callie and Reese found a smile or two to share with their parents as more opportunities arose for our posing with pumpkins segment of the blog.

Although we had already gotten our hands on a couple of pumpkins from Happy Jack's, we needed a good carving pumpkin. At Evan's, however, the wagons are all manual. And now that Reese is a part of Team Bowes, Dad needs to pull a little harder while also making sure he doesn't catapult Reese out of the wagon. And you thought this was just a picture of a serene trip out to a pumpkin patch.

This year John was not going to let another pumpkin carving season go by without joining in the fun and showing Callie how it all works. As a sign of the times, John first had to go next door to see if the Chrismans had any newspaper to spread on the floor. This is one of the effects of getting your news via the internet I guess. And for the record, John had to deny Sarah's recommendation of the pumpkin carving kit at Target. Do people not use their kitchen knives for this stuff anymore?!? What is the world coming to?

Callie was an eager assistant in the whole process. She was all set to dig out the insides of the pumpkin and she certainly wanted to use the big kitchen knife. That, however, will have to wait. Not pictured here is Reese, who spent most of the time trying to get into everything and anything. It was a fun experience to say the least.


Here are the carvers with the product of their labors. It is not the most dramatic pumpkin, but I'm sure the carving will get more sophisticated as the years pass.



And of course all of the above was simply a lead up to the main event - Halloween. When the night finally arrived we were ready and raring to go.

We'll start with our little strawberry. Obviously she was pretty bewildered by the whole experience. But she just kept her eyes on Callie to get an understanding of what the heck was going on. The high point of the evening was that Reese pulled in some additional candy for her parents. And the low point was that people kept mistaking her for an apple. Oh well.

Callie certainly looked the part as we embarked on the evening. However, she still struggled with the basic trick or treat etiquette. There were more than a few awkward moments where she stood silent, her parents tried to encourage her to say trick-or-treat, and the poor soul handing out candy just wanted us off of their porch. But we insisted on taking advantage of the educational opportunity such moments presented. We're still not sure if anything stuck. But we tried.


The final picture of this long post captures the two little girls soaking in the Halloween spirit. They are quite a pair, and with every day they bring more joy to our lives. A few challenges here and there - but joy is the biggest thing, that's for sure.



Now that we have successfully updated our blog, we are off to California to enjoy our Thanksgiving festivities with the Sacramento crew. It will mark our fifth flight to California this year. And boy are our arms tired! John thinks he's so funny. Have a great Turkey Day!