The Weird Shouting Guys

Tonight, Ladan and I went for a walk to Walgreens and to the bank. It's about a mile or so each direction, and since it was a nice night, I decided to see how long Ladan can walk. It was lots of fun! He held my hand the entire way and wanted to run every time we needed to cross a street (after looking both ways and yelling out, "We're safe!" every time of course).

Well, we got into Walgreens, and since Halloween is approaching, there were lots of strange looking creatures hanging from the ceilings and the walls. Ladan doesn't know a whole lot about Halloween, so these things were a little bit surprising to him. He kept saying, "Mom, look at those giant weird guys up there."

We were walking out of the store to go to the bank, and he saw a strange-looking ghoulish kind of guy. The guy was bald, had no eyebrows, had his mouth open like he was yelling, and had a sort of dirty-looking robe thing on. This particular guy stood out to Ladan for some reason. He stopped to look at the guy and said, "That's really strange, Mom. That guy is shouting."

I asked him what he thought the guy was saying. He replied, "I think he's yelling, 'Help! I lost my eyebrows and my hair and I'm all dirty!'" Nothing about, "I'm going to get you!" or any such phrase that might be scaring someone else. Ladan was fairly certain that the guy was just freaked out because he looked like a freak! Hilarious!

On the way home, he was talking about the weird shouting guys in the store, and I said something like, "It's not too nice that they're shouting like that, is it?" He answered, "No. That guy should have said, 'Would you please help me find my eyebrows and my hair and clean me up?' He didn't need to shout about it." We laughed all the way home!

On Saturday we took the boys out to Huber's Orchard to pick a pumpkin. We went into the kids' area and rode out to the field to feed the animals. And then we rode a different tractor out to the pumpkin patch. It was a lot of fun! Here are a few photos...

This is about as close as Ladan got to a goat's mouth.

Gabe, on the other hand, was all about the goats licking the corn right out of his hand. He loved it when they had to pry his little hand open to get their food! His own tongue was sticking out the entire time he was feeding them.

These are out in the pumpkin patch...

The boys loved this green pumpkin.

We had to convince them that it wasn't necessary to throw it like a football.

Ladan was having a blast!

I think Gabe was trying hard to develop a strategy for choosing.

(Doesn't he look like a coach standing on the sidelines?!?)

Here's the little guy we finally brought home. As a result of our new friend's presence in the middle of the table,

Ladan is very proud to be properly pronouncing pumpkin (as opposed to "ponekin").

Did you notice that Gabe has to wear his hat just slightly tilted to the side just like Ladan did? How cute is that?