Keene Pumpkin Festival

We finally made it up to the Keene Pumpkin Festival this year!  We'd heard about it in the past, but had always been busy.  Every year in Keene, NH they try to break the world record for carved pumpkins.  I guess Keene held the record until 2006, when Boston beat it with 30,128 pumpkins, and they haven't been able to beat it since.

They ask you to bring a carved pumpkin to donate... so we did.

It is really a fun festival.  The whole town kind of pulls together to put it on.  They shuttled us on school buses from the parking lot to the center of town.  The boys LOVED riding on the school bus for the first time.  I'll admit it was kind of scary.  I mean going from five point harness to just sitting there...and sometimes standing there... yeah, I think James is still too young.  But Alan will be riding these all too soon. Scary.

Speaking of scary... here is our pumpkin face

When you got there, you had to "sign in" your pumpkin so that it would be included in the official count.  Then you placed it somewhere along the streets.  Here is ours on the end.

We walked down this little side street and found the Robertson building

Though the boys were more interested in climbing on the concrete blocks

Here is the pumpkin tower at the center of town

And our cute boys in front of the pumpkins

The pumpkin bowling was their favorite part!

James loved it too...though he will need a little practice before next year,

All in all it was a pretty fun event.  We didn't stay terribly long as our boys were not in the happiest moods and we were trying to get to see the second half of the BYU football game.  So we missed the food court. Bummer. And in the evening, they light all of the jack-o-lanterns.  It would be really cool to see them all lit up. I guess we'll just have to go back another year.

And we didn't get to hear the final count before we left either.  But later we found out that they did break the record!  This year there were 30,581 lit pumpkins!

Anyway, it was a fun little family trip and we're excited to go back again.

Harvest Time

Well, as promised, here is an update on our gardening efforts.  Overall, we were pretty satisfied with our results.

Here is a picture of our garden toward the end of the season.  Some of the plants are already gone, but most are still there.  Our fence held up nicely and we were able to keep out the creatures.

And here is Alan with one of our pickings.  As far as yields went, we got something from everything that we planted.  We got TONS of tomatoes and beans, probably about 5-6 zucchini, 4-5 peppers, 2 ears of corn, a few peas, and one pumpkin.  Next time we will give the squash and pumpkin a bit more room!  They were crazy!  We are excited to expand next year and try some new things.

The boys are quite proud of their home grown pumpkin... even if it is on the smallish side

In addition to our garden harvesting, we couldn't welcome in the fall without apple picking.  Scott came with us this year.  He hadn't been before!

And we got to go with the whole Robertson clan!  How fun!  It is so nice to have family around.

Happy Birthday Megan

Ok, no, we didn't get to celebrate Megan's birthday with her- though we have celebrated her birthday in Boston in the past.  We just knew she likes seeing pictures of her nephews and niece and we've been slow at putting them up.  So for her birthday present, we thought we'd get our acts together and post a few pictures. :)  

We all love having a baby sister around and it is hard to believe how quickly she is growing!  Here are a ton of pictures of us just hanging out with our little Lucy. 

The day that I got home from the hospital, Alan found this bag of various binks that we've had around. He and James each chose one so that they could be like Lucy. :)

Another picture from our first day home from the hospital.  James wanted to lay with his little sister.

Holding Lucy

And again

And again

And again!  Can you tell they like to hold her.  (At least for the camera anyway!)

Tub time! She loves it.

And Alan loves to take pictures almost as much as he loves being in them.

Sleepy baby

Tummy time with one brother

And then with both!

Lucy with her cute bow made by Megan

She's a very good and happy baby

With her happy brothers.  Don't worry.  There really is a fair amount of screaming and crying too.  From all three. Maybe I should take pictures of those times too. :)

She's all focus these days.

I don't know what's up with the lighting here, but it made for a total diva pic.

And more loves

A lot of the time she looks like Scott.  But sometimes she looks like me... like in this pic.

Sporting one of her new flower headbands

And she just wanted to leave you with one of her cute smiles.

Cougar Football

We're excited about the season.  Been some ups and down so far, but overall... we're still excited.  It would be nice if the games came on a little earlier, but oh well. Luckily Grandpa has cable so we're at least able to watch them, which is more than last year!  And we're hoping for a good game tomorrow night.  Go Cougs!

First family photo with Lucy

Lucy with her big brother.

And with both big brothers!  Don't worry, James is not a Ute, just in his jammies. :)

And we had to have a little Lucy photo shoot featuring her beautiful BYU bow! (thanks Aunt Meg!)

It turns out it's hard to have a photo shoot with big brothers around.  They seem to magically appear in the split second it takes to take the picture.

And a good portion of your pictures look like this...

or like this.  But we love them anyway. :)

Happy Birthday Dad

Well, we still had to do a birthday post for Scott, even if his birthday was in the midst of all the craziness after Lucy's birth!  I mean, it was his last one in his 20's so... we wanted to remember it. :)

Scott opening his presents.  Or I should say holding his presents after the boys have opened them.

Super excited for his brownie sundae.  The man loves brownie sundaes.

Not gonna lie.  We forgot about the whole blowing out the candles thing.  I'm not sure how.  But we did.  Maybe it was that it was brownies and not cake...or the fact that I had a 5 day old child?  I'm not sure.  But luckily we had two pans of brownies, and sang to him after we had all eaten.  :)

Wanting to be just like daddy and trying on one of his new shirts.  He got a lot of them.  He just donated all of his 100% cotton shirts to the salvation army (since no one is big into ironing around here and therefore they never get worn...)  So some nice wrinkle free cotton poly blend shirts were on the birthday list this year. :)

One of Scott's most popular gifts!  We had a pretty intense game of ladderball following the birthday celebrations.  It was super competitive, but in the end the birthday boy and his team proved victorious.  It's not horseshoes, but I think he still likes it.  Obviously his boys do.