Annual Pumpkin Patch Pilgrimage

This past weekend my sister Johannah and I ventured out with a small gaggle of boys.

 I say a gaggle because my family excels in the boy department, and it's just a funy word. 

Johannah and her husband have a combined family of seven (7!!) boys, aged 5-17. Insanity?? Perhaps. Either way, it sure makes me feel like a big fat whiner when I complain about my measly brood of two and how they run circles around me. My brother doesn't have any kids, but my oldest sister has another boy to add to the mix, along with our family's only real, live girl speciman. Poor Ruthie... she was pretty upset with me when I failed to produce a girl cousin.

Anyhoosies. My inability to bring forth a child of the feminine persuasion and the resulting backlash is a story for another day. Today's story? Our outing to the pumpkin patch. So let's get back to that...

First we tried the small 'kiddie' maze. It was no sweat for these dudes.

Then we ventured into the regular maze, with some backup in the form of one of the older cousins.

Then... we got ditched. By the eight-year-old and the thirteen-year-old.

Et tu, Brute?

Getting through that sucker at noon was tough enough -- I can't imagine what it would have been like in the dark. Or worse, if it was haunted. I'm the girl who gets laughed at by young kids at amusement parks when I bury my head in my hands and plug my ears in the haunted house rides.

And of course we all picked some pumpkins...

...and it would have been silly of us to not take advantage of the labor we had at our disposal.

But we paid them well, no worries. We took them home to hot chocolate, real apple cider, and doughnuts (with a homemade apple cider glaze, no less -- Martha Stewart, move over.)

Or really? Don't. Just stay put, Martha. Because I'm a corner cutter who bought doughnuts instead of going to the trouble of making my own. Honestly though, who fries their own doughnuts?? 

(Ahem. If you do, could you kindly make some of these and mail them to me?)

(Oh, and in case you were confused, don't send me any more of those. I was talking about the doughnuts.)