My Ebenezer

Noah begs me every year to carve a pumpkin.  Ah, yes, carving pumpkins.  Immediately this evokes dreamy images of crunchy leaves and crisp air, of lattes with harvesty-sounding names, of scarves and silvery breath-vapor early in the morning.  Then I snap back to reality as I remember that I am, in fact, sweating (which may have more to do with the hot flashes that currently beset me, but that's beside the point).  It is 83 degrees, which means the said carved pumpkin will last a whopping 3 days before it melts into an orange puddle of moldy pumpkin goo.  Such is pumpkin carving in Florida. :) That, and have you ever noticed how much work it is to carve a pumpkin?  How much mess ?  And did you notice how Noah always asks if WE can carve a pumpkin, when he actually means "YOU, MOM"?  He has good intentions.  He shows up with the knife and the gargantuan metal spoon, smiling all eager and ready, but at the first sign of this-will-take-long...

I finally cleaned out my camera with pictures from who-knows-how-long ago, and found this photo from the first day of school this year.  A few noteworthy things: 1.  Those are Noah's fingers giving himself bunny ears. 2.  This is an illustration of Noah's "loop-hole" mentality; always pushing the limits.  We had just taken a photo 3 seconds ago, in which he had given ME bunny ears. When I was previewing the shot (praise the Lord for digital photos!  Remember when you had to wait for the film to be developed to find out you had your eyes closed?) and saw the bunny ears, I said, "Don't give me bunny ears! Here, let's take it again."  So that's him, not giving me bunny ears. Nice. 3.  That's me, growing my hair out.  And me, almost deciding to cut it again.  For the life of me, I can't get it to quit flipping out. But, we press on. :) 4.  Noah has lost a few more teeth since this photo.  They change so quickly these days! ...

It was good this past weekend to get out on a double date with Matt and Jen.  We haven't been able to do that in years because normally we are each other's babysitters.  Ironically, this time, instead of being able to finally talk without the disruption of small children, we went four-wheeling where we couldn't have talked if we wanted to! :) I'm still laughing about that one.  But the guys really love their four-wheelers, and I know they usually have little tykes climbing all over them angling for rides, so it was a treat to have their wives on the back for a change.  We had fun!  The Lord held off the rain (have I mentioned that we have had almost nothing but rain the whole month of September?) while we were out, and we returned to our kids refreshed and prepared (well, almost) for the parenting thing again.