Hokey Mokers

One of the things my dad says is "Hokey Mokers." I think it's a variation of "Holy Smokes," but I'm not really even sure about that. Anyway, we did a "Fall Fun" outing and ended up teaching Brighton to say Hokey Mokers. You'll be able to see why.
This family farm we found up north has the least expensive Honey Crisp Apples around that we know of, and we lots of those. So, we were headed there for our apples, and then we were pleasantly surprised to find they also had really huge and really inexpensive pumpkins too. I considered and then tried rolling one, but it took my dad and Jon together to heave this one into the trunk. While we were there, a guy bought one that required a fork lift...for $25! For the use of the forklift alone I was thinking he deserved a $25 tip!

So this giant pumpkin will greet you if you visit us in the next month or so. We aren't going to carve it; I think that would take double-digit hours and tools we don't have. We are considering keeping and replanting the seeds though. Either way, I suspect we'll be saying "Hokey Mokers" about our pumpkins for years to come.

Smitty's and Steps

We were looking for a quick evening outing last week, so we decided to head to Smitty's Pronto Pups near Holland State Park. We were there once when it opened, but their menu is much more extensive now. We had ice-cream, so we're going to have to go back for those deep fried pickles we've heard about! Have you tried them? Thankfully they're open 'til the end of next month. This restored boot was quite a hit, but Brighton kept asking, "Where'd da watah go?"

A trip to Smitty's wouldn't be complete without climbing the next-door stairs to the top of Mount Pisgah. It wasn't long ago we had to wear him if we wanted to head up there, but this time he climbed up to the very top all by himself! He thought he was big stuff, and we were pretty impressed too.

Not Without Bumps

I feel it necessary to clarify my "Back to School 2010" post, as it was in reality not without bumps and in need of some clarification. The transition this school year did go extremely well as I wrote, but we were struggling with something else. It started Thursday, September 2 and is just clearing up now.
Brighton broke out into unexplainable hives - no other symptoms, just really nasty hives. The doctor told us he wasn't contagious, and we wanted to believe him, but he looked just awful. So just to be extra cautious, we kept him home. At the 12 day mark the doctor determined blood work was in order. The picture below is from that day. Jon stayed home from work to take him to the lab where they learned that Bright is double-jointed in his elbows making the blood draw a nightmare in itself (one lab gave up and sent them to another), but they both survived.After bottles of Benadryl, hydrocortisone cream, and then a steroid prescription, it appears that whatever was bugging Bright needed to simply run its course. Weeks of giving this little guy medicine was probably just as bad as the unexplainable hives for two and a half weeks. We have lots of theories on what caused it, but more importantly we are just so thankful that Bright's bumps are behind of us, and we're hoping they stay that way.

Picnic Plus Ponies

We had our annual block party last weekend. It just happened to be in the rain, but we didn't have to travel far. Just down the street from our house there is a horse farm where this year's party was held. We ate great food, visited with our neighbors, and fed carrots to horses all in the rain. We quickly determined we were very naive about what we thought was a pony farm down the road from us. The horses were BEAUTIFUL; even the barn was beautiful. We weren't just feeding any horses, we learned they were all Arabian. What an operation! We had no idea. It was very impressive to see them, feed them, and learn about them - even if it was raining.