This October, for the fourth year in a row, we hosted Autumn Applelooza, the Pull family celebration including all things fall, apple, and pumpkin. We enjoyed the company of several friends, some who had endured our festivities before and some who had not, and several who had added small fries to their family in the last year. With a new small fry of our own (Joey was just six weeks old) we kept things on a simpler scale than in previous years.
The kids enjoyed fun in the yard while the adults identified the leaves from trees, bushes, and a vine (all taken from our yard). The plants in question were a dogwood, japanese maple, red blood maple, maple tree, azaela bush, cherry tree, pumpkin, holly bush, magnolia tree, and cedar tree.
After leaf identification (Congratulations to Andrew for his win) we participated in an Autumn Applelooza version of guess the weight, small fry style.
Various sized and shaped pumpkins were lined up on a table and assigned letters. Then Joe would shout out a small fry or combination of small fries (i.e. Xandra, or Xandra and Joey, or all the kids present). Each team or person would have to choose the combination of pumpkins that weighed most closely to that of the small fry or fries in question.
Once everyone recorded their answers, Joe weighed each of the small fries and each of the pumpkins.
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| Theia assisted him in tallying the results. |
Then the weights of each were tallied and compared. The Shumans emerged as the team most capable of accurately judging the weights of both.
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| Joe's cousin Katie joined us for the day. |
Next we got to work carving pumpkins.
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| Tim S. prepping the pumpkin for Jennifer to carve. |
Our friends, Niina and Cheekin, from Finland and Malaysia, had never carved a pumpkin. They were very interested and fascinated by the process, but despite our best efforts (and the appearance of this picture) we could not convince them to actually give it a try.
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| Tim and Katie made pumpkins that went together (see below). |
Xandra was very interested in the pumpkin carving this year. She helped Joe decide what to carve.
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| Jacob was one of the new small fries present this year. |
Our smallest fry slept for most of the afternoon.
By the time the pumpkins were finished, we'd worked up enough of an appetite to enjoy some taco soup and cornbread.
Once dinner and dessert were eaten, we turned to Andrew for entertainment.
Everyone left shortly after.
The final pumpkins from left to right: Niina and CheeKin's uncarved pumpkin, the Glenn pumpkin (design by Madeline), the hockey player and goalie pumpkins, Joe & Xandra's pumpkin, the trick or treat pumpkin (it's hard to see the words in this picture).
When all our friends had left, we lit our pumpkin and the girls enjoyed a few minutes admiring it before bedtime.
Note: Thanks to Naomi for many of the pictures on this post.
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