What a Ride!: Orange Orbs and Other October Objects

(Like the alliteration? That has always been my favorite literary device, ha!)
So, this has been a busy fun week, and I figured I should record the memories here while Jim is downstairs on Jadon duty while *trying* to watch football. Poor guy. Jadon has only escaped upstairs here, oh, about 12 times, but Jim has been great at retrieving him and playing cave, guns, basketball, football, making Gatorade, and everything else I hear in the background while enjoying my afternoon off (I have such a great hubby!) (and he even mowed the lawn during this time!) (while Jadon played down the street with 2 of his friends...and then got brought home because he hit the one who likes to "mother" [read "boss"] him around...)
Besides the normal play dates and meetings and appointments and nights at church, etc., this week [which kept me from ever making it to the grocery store or doing laundry!] [good thing I have a well-stocked pantry/freezer/closet!], Thursday was our mondo day of fun. First, we went with my MOPS table to the pumpkin patch at Bates Nut Farm. It's a great rural farm and the kids had a ton of fun. It was so weird having one of the older kids this year. When did my baby grow up into such a big boy?!

Jadon particularly loved running through all the pumpkin fields and climbing all over the piles of pumpkins (key word "climbing" in most of these pictures!)

(and rearranging their pumpkin displays)

He also enjoyed the petting zoo. (He was thrilled that there was a "park" inside the pen! It didn't matter to him that it was supposed to be for the animals, not the kids.)

And of course, he enjoyed riding a pony.

And just hanging out with his friend Molly (Kristen and I are already discussing an arranged marriage, ha! Hey, when you find a godly girl (she already talks about having Jesus in her heart...and she's not even 2 yet!) with godly parents that you like, is that such a bad thing? :))

(hey Sarah, can you tell they're eating Bamba together?)

So the annual trip to the pumpkin patch was fun. I ended up buying a more untraditional Fairytale pumpkin (they're more whitish and flatter, and look like Cinderella's carriage), since we're not going to carve it anyway. Too bad I never got around to taking a picture of it. Hopefully I will later...

Then, on Thursday night, we headed down to San Diego where the Lakers were playing the Kings in an exhibition preseason game. (That's the other orange orb I was alluding to :)) Now if you know anything about Jim and me, you know that we kind of have a long-standing rivalry in the area of professional basketball. Growing up in Davis, poor Jim was suckered into becoming a die-hard Sacramento Kings fan. I, on the other hand, grew up cheering on the Lakers alongside my dad and a generous bowl of ice cream. The week we married (June 2002), the Kings and the Lakers played 7 games to determine the Western Conference Champions. The Lakers won while we were on the plane en route to our honeymoon, and the Kings have never come even close again. It's been a rough decade for Jim :)
Anyhow, when we heard our teams were matching up so close to us, of course we had to get in on that action.This was Austin's first NBA game, and he was pretty excited. I was excited to have a partner in my Lakers cheering, since Jim quickly staked a claim on Jadon's affections.

By the way, can you read Jadon's shirt? (Jim wanted to make Jadon a Kings shirt, but I, of course, refused to do it for him. There's no way I could betray my team like that! But when I ultimately helped with providing the shirt and the iron-on transfer paper, he decided to be generous.)

Yeah, so in case you didn't notice, Jim made it. He's still a little new at these crafty endeavors. He decided we needed to get a picture of Jadon in the mirror so we could better appreciate it:

So except for crazy horrible traffic on the way down, $20 parking, and, oh yeah, the Lakers lost (bummer!), we had a great time making the most of a fun opportunity.

Friday night was Homecoming at Austin's high school, so after his JV game we stayed for the Varsity game. El Camino did a great job. The evening was Disney-themed, and there were tons of students dressed in character posing for photo-ops. (The $7 game ticket was a much better deal than Disneyland!). Jadon was enamored with Minnie, and kept running back up to her. He liked Mickey okay, too.

His other favorite character was the El Camino Wildcat...

And the gigantic rainbow lollipop... (don't worry, he only finished about 1/25th of it...which kept him up for hours!)

At the end of the half-time show, they had 5 skydivers land on the infield and then a cool fireworks show. I think this was the coolest high school homecoming I've seen. This was Jadon's first time truly experiencing fireworks, since they haven't had them in Oceanside on July 4th for the past 2 years, and he loved them. He kept cheering at every "another pop!"

After last night's eventful evening, we had an eventful morning today, participating in Oceanside's annual SUN project. This year we helped beautify the run-down neighborhood behind Oceanside High School. Our church group somehow didn't get assigned our own house, so we painted a long wall and helped with yard work on other teams' houses. And then we all enjoyed a free Chick-Fil-A lunch.
Jadon's favorite part was the painting. When we had to wake him up early this morning, he jumped out of bed when we said he was going to get to paint.