O Thou who has given us so much, mercifully grant us one thing more- a grateful heart. -George Herbert
I couldn't let October pass by without recording the very best part of that very best month: Thanksgiving weekend. Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving--appropriately as my farmer friends add--at harvest. And where better to celebrate than on a farm, surrounded by the autumnal color and bounty . We've taken care to stay as close as possible to our food sources this year, buying local and in season, and growing some of our own. So, riding our bikes down to the UBC farm and being fed a feast of freshly picked beets, carrots, potatoes, chard, cabbage, applesauce and pumpkins, completed with stuffing made from home-baked bread and a free-range turkey, made this Thanksgiving seem more fitting, more true to its original purpose than any before, as a day for praise to the Creator for the provision of our daily food--a much more obscure truth when you pluck a box off the grocery store shelf.
It was a pleasant day, so we ate out in the greenhouse.
I have been bemoaning the passing of October, decidedly the best month. But November is not all sogginess and bone-chilling wind and shockingly early darkness and runny noses (though there is a lot of that around here already.) It has its own charms. Perfect toadstools, remaining bits of blazing color amidst the bounty of browns, relatively mild fall afternoons for backyard play, and early candlelit dinners of stew, chili, pumpkin soup, and more stew.
Cora's favorite outdoor pastime is making "stew"
BTW: that one tooth has been around since she was 3 1/2 months. I thought she was an early teether, but she's almost 9 months now and no more have poked through. Apparently it's just the unruly rogue.
Cora's hand-me-down coat from the Alpharetta neighbors. Thank goodness we had another girl for this precious stuff.
October is going out with a bang. (Literally. This city loves fireworks on Halloween.) This weekend is packed full with 3 kiddie birthday parties, 2 adult Halloween parties (you should see David's costume, but he made me swear not to post pictures. Something about pastoral search committees), a fall festival at the UBC Botanical gardens, and trick-or-treating in our student-family housing, pedestrian-only neighborhood, which equals: hundreds of children.
Tonight I had the fun of watching my daughter turn from a greedy hoarder into an enthusiastic giver. As our massive bowl of candy dwindled in the face of the hundreds of children charging our house, I began picking through Cora's trick-or-treating pumpkin bag for some more fodder (i.e. the pieces I don't really like). As I'd drop them in the bowl, about every other piece Cora would say "I like that" and put it back in her pumpkin. That was fine and at least the hoards were slowing. I left her in charge of distribution to the stragglers in order to go get Hannah warmed up and ready for bed, but I could hear her voice downstairs as she kept excitedly coming into the house to get more candy from her bag until it was depleted as well. "I need more candy! There's more kids!" Once she was in charge of the giving, she discovered it's much more fun to give than to hoard all for yourself. It was a good lesson for me, considering before the kids came I had already pulled all the Twix and Butterfingers out of the bowl and now have them hoarded in my top cupboard.
A very enthusiastic Tinkerbell and dragon.
The best friends: two fairies and a dragon.
Visiting the botanical gardens.
They belonged in a fairytale!
And later for trick-or-treating. These guys are inseparable.
What did you get?
The fairy godmother. And her monkey? Which story is that again?
Look at that face Hannah has. Candy even tastes great with the wrapper on. Speaking of yummy wrappers, at a bonfire birthday party last night, I let a fussy Hannah gnaw on my cupcake wrapper, thinking she'd like the taste but would only get a few crumbs. Next thing I knew, the wrapper was only a tiny tattered remnant. So much for only crumbs.
Cora expressed a mixture of both fear and fascination with the costumed characters coming to our door.
Living in Vancouver where David is pursuing his Master of Divinity and Megan her Master of Christian Studies at Regent College. Daughter Cora Grace was born August 12, 2006, and Hannah Shalom February 4, 2009.
