With Halloween just a few days away and more holidays soon to follow; I've been thinking about activities I have engaged in during this time of year in the past that have been memorable and special enough to make into a yearly tradition.The following are memories that I am anxious to relive; decorating my house, visiting a local pumpkin patch, and carving pumpkins.
Last week I decorated for Halloween. Nothing major, not the kind of decorations people drive by to see, mostly inside the house. John has a huge bin of Halloween decorations he has collected over the years, all of which come out when he has hosted a Halloween party in the past. We are not having a Halloween party this year. So,only the decorations that I like came down from the attic. The other decorations; the screaming mechanical ghouls, light up vampire bats, and life size bloody clown figures are not adorning our doorways or hiding in the downstairs bathroom shower stall this year. Decorating the house made me excited for the holidays; I love the way they made the house look like a different place. It's funny how the placement of a few new colorful objects will do that to an interior.
In the past, John and I have visited one of the "Pumpkin Patches" on Sauvie Island to buy the pumpkins we carve for Halloween. There are a couple Pumpkin Patch farms on the island, usually crowded with families in rubber rain boots stomping happily through the mud to see the barn that houses a market, apple cider and kettle corn stands, hay rides, farm animals, and of course pumpkins of every shape and size imaginable for sale. Sauvie Island is a thirty minute drive from our house in NE Portland, Oregon. There are certainly closer places to buy pumpkins but it's fun to get out of town and do something unnecessary just for kicks. Besides we still talk about memories like: the giant sow who almost busted through her pen when she saw someone eating an apple nearby, and Hercules, the furry miniature horse I fell in love with.
We didn't carve pumpkins last year, I can't remember why, things got busy or maybe we got the pumpkins too early and they started to rot. It wasn't until after Halloween that realized we hadn't done it and was disappointed. I wanted to have my memories reinforced by repeating them. Memories like: being amazed at John's precision and speed (he is the best pumpkin carver I have ever seen,)being proud of the pirate ship and monster pumpkin we expertly created, and showcasing on the porch with illuminating candles.
