Autumn Applelooza V: It's All Fun & Games

Autumn Applelooza, our annual celebration of everything fall, descended upon our house the weekend before Halloween.  An unplanned snow and freezing temperatures

 could not dampen the celebration or the fierce competition.  It did however, bring all of our previously anticipated outdoor activities to the indoors.  Three teams of two competed in a day's worth of activities to be named Autumn Applelooza V Champion. 

It was all fun and games with bobbing for apples

three legged races through the house,

a sensory tub loaded with autumn related things that our competitors had one minute to touch (no sight involved)

and then put their heads together to create a list of what they had felt,

or thought they felt,

pumpkin carving,

and pumpkin Jeopardy!  The competition for Pumpkin Jeopardy! was so fierce, we forgot to take pictures.

Of course, as happens every year, Team Shuman won the first three events and anticlimactically secured the overall crown at the earliest mathematically possible time.  Their eternal nemesis, Dan Yi, repeatedly came up short, each time when he was certain that he had defeated the Shumans in an event for the first time ever.  (The last five years have given Dan many opportunities, but the Shumans always beat him.  It's quite remarkable, because every year all of the events except pumpkin-carving are new, never-been-tried-before.)

So, in a desperate attempt to inject some faux drama into the final event for the evening, we instituted a capricious and utterly unprincipled midstream rules change.  We declared, ukase-style, that the winning team in Pumpkin Jeopardy! would be this year's overall champion as well.

The teams were well matched, and the contest came down to the wire.  Through the combination of a proper alignment of the stars, baby Jacob distracting the Shumans, domination of entire categories of questions by Tim Johnson, and timely answers provided by late-arriving reinforcements, Sarah & Beth, Dan's team eked out a narrow victory.  The Shumans' reign of terror over Autumn Applelooza was broken. 

 As for the younger set, the girls enjoyed playing with Jacob

and they thought Jacob's daddy was a good reader.

Joey stayed awake for more of the festivities this year.

And when all the guests left, the girls enjoyed their favorite Autumn Applelooza tradition:

a closer look at their pumpkin (carving by daddy, direction by Xandra)

with the lights off, of course.

Contributions of text in Italics by Joe Pull.