On the Road Again

Last weekend was a basketball tournament trip we hadn't planned on, one that was added later in the season.  We had previously thought we were going to Albany a month ago, but that turned into Binghamton.  But this time Albany stuck--although, truth be told, we never actually got anywhere near the city since the tournament was in a suburb further north, almost closer to Schenectady.  I had high hopes of driving through the city and seeing the Capitol, or maybe checking out the observation deck I remember from my 8th grade class trip, but none of that ended up happening.  It was a pretty basic, straightforward trip, which was admittedly a little disappointing for one that was almost four hours away.  I like to make the most of trips like that to justify the drive, but for many reasons it just wasn't meant to be this time.  

The trip started out typically chaotic, which we always try to avoid but inevitably almost always end up doing.  I didn't even start packing until Thursday night, which I suppose is a product of still adjusting to in-person work life and just being tired in the evenings.  I panicked a little on Friday morning, even though I was in pretty good shape, and realized that if we didn't leave until after dinner, we'd be driving almost entirely in the dark for close to four hours.  Plus we'd get in really late and even without an early wake-up, that could be problematic.  I ended up taking a last minute half day, but worked a little past a half day, until about 2pm, just because I wasn't expecting to be out and didn't think I needed to rush--especially when Craig said he wanted to take Jacob to the Y for some shooting before we left.  So I knew we still weren't getting on the road too early.  When I got home, I ended up going out in my yard to figure out if I could salvage anything else from the garden before some colder nights hit over the weekend.  As I walked out, I was shocked to notice that my out-of-control morning glory looked a little...different.

I promise you that the bottom once looked just as lush as the top!

Apparently some deer got a little (OK, maybe a lot) hungry, and despite this being there for months without so much as a nibble (at least since something ate all but one of my little seedlings a couple weeks in), I guess maybe they got desperate this time of year?  They'd also snacked on some of my giant tomato plants, which were nearly the only thing left in the garden aside from one healthy-ish but unproductive zucchini plant.  For whatever reason, the carnage got me a little overeager and I decided everything needed to come out immediately.  So I picked as many tomatoes as I could (almost all of which rotted within five days--those late season ones are tricky, as I learned last year), ripped out those plants and my fencing, and then started hacking away at morning glory #1, which was quite the undertaking.  I can't even describe how twisted and overwhelming it was.  I started with hand clippers but eventually needed the giant hedge trimmers to make any headway.  It didn't take long in the end but it was pretty crazy while it lasted.  It filled a large garbage can.  The one on the other side wasn't nearly as bad, but it also had gotten a bit twisted around the top once I added fishing line for it to climb a couple months back, since it couldn't figure out how to make it up the lamp post itself.  By the time I pulled that one down, I was out of time, and still have a garden plot of rotting tomatoes that need cleaning up.  

They self-planted at least three plants from that same mess last year, so I definitely need to do some work!  I dread thinking what days of torrential rain has already embedded in the soil, though.  I also still have my sad pumpkin patch to clean up, so hopefully the weather cooperates a little this weekend…but it’s not looking good.

Anyway, by the time the boys were back, Carter had been picked up, and we were done packing, we realized we should really just eat a super-fast dinner at home and then get on the road.  But we didn't leave until after 5:30 in the end, so I'm not sure the half day was really that worth it after all.  But the garden cleanup was nice to get done, I guess.  It was quite a long drive, and most of it was still in the dark.  The sunset was pretty, however, and since it was mostly Thruway driving, we didn't miss much.  I think we only stopped twice, and one was a preventative stop since every other Thruway rest stop is currently closed and we didn't want to get stuck in the middle of a 70-mile stretch with no easy bathroom options.  We did enjoy going through Schenectady, which has some really cool newer stuff (a casino!) and some nicely redone older stuff.  After that we were on backroads for a bit before getting back to civilization and our hotel, which was a lovely Holiday Inn Express, which you may recall is my favorite.  I can't take credit for booking it--and it wasn't cheap--but admittedly it made those two nights considerably lower stress after the vacation disaster (the "trash hotel", as Carter so eloquently referred to it in one of his writing assignments).  The room was probably one of the biggest we've had, with two queens, a pull-out couch, a small kitchenette, a desk and table, and a handicap-accessible bathroom.

Breakfast was pretty monumental on Saturday, because I was FINALLY reunited with my beloved cinnamon rolls!  After two other Holiday Inn Express stays this year without them, it was so good to see them waiting at the buffet!  I won't lie--I had two each day!  So good, as was the rest of the spread.  

Saturday's games were a bit of a mixed bag.  Jacob did have one stretch where he made four straight shots for 10 points, which was pretty awesome, but he still wasn't playing nearly as much as he should.  He sat for an entire half at one point because the coach “lost track of time”.  This coach is honestly just frustrating in a lot of ways.  They won both games, however--one by a shockingly huge margin--so that was good to see.

We ended up having a lazy afternoon after the second game.  We laid around for a while, but I finally worked up the energy to go out.  Carter and I were hoping to hit up a playground, but when we went to the only decent-looking close one, the entrances were blocked and cars were lined up along the side of the road.  I finally figured out there was a drive-thru trick-or-treating event there that night, so I promised we'd find time on Sunday to go back for a bit.  Defeated, we headed to Target to pick up some antacid for me because I had been having a painful reflux/esophageal spasm problem for a couple days that worsened as we drove on Friday, and I needed something for it.  After we got back, dinner turned into a little bit of a debacle.  We debated for a while and finally settled on Red Robin, only to find out they had an hour wait!  Then we went back to a restaurant near the hotel that had gluten-free options, but that was a half hour and there was some added awkwardness because a bunch of other parents were out there and we hadn't gotten a text even though Craig had been in touch with one of the moms about meeting out.  We ended up all picking our own dinners--big boys had Chipotle, Carter got Wendy's, and I got Subway.  Luckily they were all across the street from one another! The other parents did end up contacting us later, but by then I was really uncomfortable from my reflux so Craig walked across the parking lot to hang out for grownup time for a couple hours. 

Sunday morning it was back to the gym.  Another win and a few more points for Jacob!

After the first game, we had a little break so Carter and I headed back to the playground.  It was a lovely but slightly chilly day.  As we arrived I noticed a Messenger notification, and it was from an old friend asking what happened to "Kim".  I immediately opened Facebook because I assumed that's where he saw something, and usually big stuff pops to the top.  Sure enough, an old friend of ours from our church days (and my school days) had passed away.  She was two years younger than me, and was the on-and-off "girlfriend" of my cousin back in elementary school.  She'd been battling cancer quietly for a while, but apparently a tumor caused seizures that led to a stroke.  She left behind a husband and two boys, 10 and 7.  She was a beautiful force in this world, so positive and bold and beautiful.  I was (and am) completely heartbroken over the whole thing.  My old classmate's sister was her BFF (quite literally) and she's obviously devastated and at a total loss.  I won't lie, my sadness clouded the playground time a bit, but I did my best to have fun and enjoy my time with Carter since I'm sure she'd have given anything for more time with her boys.

The playground was fun.  So many of the newer ones have similar features now, so I always look for the new stuff.  This one had a four way tunnel and a cargo net bridge.

As usual, Carter loved climbing, but he realized he needed to pull up his pant legs to get the grip he needed to climb!  He is impressive!

This one also had a few little spinning activities, and we found this spinning maze to be new and different--and hard!

They had a standing swing--it was more awkward than it looks!

It also had these swinging "islands".  Carter tried his darnedest to cross them fast but it was definitely more of a "slow and steady" type of thing because of how they swung!

Before heading back to basketball, we took a little walk around the park.  We wandered past the cute kiddie playground that had a fun train play area (in the background of the photo below) and stopped at one of those workout stations you find on trails.  This one had a balancing disk.  It was a challenge!

We stopped for a  second to look at these fluffy seed pods along the path.  They were impossibly silky, but it was neat to see one that still had some structure.

Across the way was a memorial, so we headed over to look at that.  It was pretty, honoring all branches of the military and showcasing bricks for various veterans.  It was surrounded by benches, and those all seemed to be named for different vets as well.  Some even had memorial flowers and trinkets left behind.

Off in the distance was a little bridge, so we walked that way back to the playground for one last round of play before the next basketball game.

Along the way I got a look at the foliage.  It looked brighter than it appears here, but it looked better than most of what I'd seen at home.  Such a weird year, between the lackluster, late-arriving colors and the extended growing season.

Case in point, this still-blooming rose bush!

We enjoyed walking over the bridge and listening to the stream below, which you could hear but barely see around all the greenery and the way the bridge slats were positioned. 

I was so glad for Carter's sake that we got to find a playground, since he always asks and the playground-friendly weather is dying down now.  He's also a pretty good sport dealing with these basketball weekends, where everything revolves around Jacob and he's just along for the ride.  He really appreciates anything like this that we can do for him. 

And how pretty is this tree that was near the playground?

We headed back to the gym for one more game.  I think Jacob ended up with four points in that one, and his team ended up winning the championship.  Here's their team picture--Jacob is on the far left. 

My well-trained boy knows he better smile!

I think he was happy to win (it beats losing) but he wasn't ecstatic because of his frustrations with this team and not really wanting to reward his coach's decisions around how he uses his players.  One kid sprained his ankle earlier in the tournament and kept playing (shades of lacrosse tournaments years back, where heat exhaustion wasn't enough to keep a player out despite Jacob sitting the bench), and boy, was that kid limping afterward.  It wasn't even that close of a game, but they kept him in anyway.  Technically Jacob should have a tournament coming up with this team in November, but we're letting him skip it.  It's five hours away, at a venue we really want to visit, but between the long trip, the expensive hotels, and his lack of playing time, it just wasn't worth it.  He's ready to move on, and so are we.  High school season awaits!

The trip home felt predictably long, but at least it was mostly in the daylight.  There were glimpses of pretty fall colors, and this was among the better spots.

I'm hoping that now that the weather is cooling off (too much, starting next week), the leaves will get better.  I've never seen so many leaves on the trees at Halloween, let alone green ones, but I'm worried they'll all just die off without changing as it gets significantly colder quickly.  We might even get a touch of snow next week.  We’ve been inundated by rain this week, too—a couple inches the other day and likely a couple more tonight into tomorrow.  It doesn’t really make it easy to enjoy what little “good fall” remains (where are those random 70 degree days?), and the timing couldn’t be worse since I’m home alone with the boys this weekend, the first of many now that lacrosse season is ramping up for the first time in almost 20 months.  Fortunately it’s supposed to stop in time for trick-or-treating.  Hard to believe Halloween is here and the countdown to the holidays is imminent.  How did we get here?!  The pandemic time warp is real, folks.  Here goes nothing…

The Lull

I'll probably totally jinx us by writing this, but I feel like lately we have settled into a bit of a lull after a couple really tough years in our house.  The pandemic made an already-hard situation worse, but I think we're finally starting to come out of it, for a lot of reasons.

As this blog has made very clear, things haven't been particularly peaceful in our house in a very long time.  Jacob hasn't been an easy kid since about the 18-24 month stage, and things went up a few notches about eight years ago, in the months after Carter joined the family.  At that point it was just Jacob acting out in ways we'd never seen before--violent tantrums, lengthy standoffs, and generally defiant behavior at a level that left us at a loss.  That was really the beginning of our new normal that exists to this day--one of evaluations, therapy, and eventually medications, first for one kid, then two.

Jacob never liked Carter or had any interest in big brother life, but once Carter was mobile and Jacob realized the threat it posed to his stuff, that's when the ignoring ended and the battles between them truly began.  Our house has been full of conflict ever since, with Craig and I constantly taking the referee role.  It's always been a challenge to get to the bottom of fights, because each kid has their own set of reasons why they did what they did, and no matter how far you track backward, inevitably there's another action and reaction so you can never really find out who started it or who's properly at fault.  It's exhausting and it's still something we're working on doing fairly, most recently at the strong urging of our therapist.  Adding to the physical battles have been the mental ones--where Carter likely experienced some trauma from being constantly bullied by his brother (which we think led to his aversion to correction, help, and losing), and Jacob is still sorting through the reality that having a brother steal his thunder probably did lead to a lot of the struggles we're still dealing with to this day.  It's been a heck of a lot to unpack, and I can't say two young boys are the best participants in delving into their feelings or psychotherapy in general, so it's been a process.  But after feeling stagnant for so many years, I feel like we're finally crawling out of the dark tunnel into a little bit of real functional normalcy.

When we went to the family therapist a month ago and had all good news, it felt super weird.  The boys were both doing well with school, the fights had decreased considerably, and we didn't really have much of urgency to discuss.  That only meant we could focus on some higher hanging fruit, of course, but it felt like a huge step.  The same thing has happened the last two times at Carter's therapy sessions, where all the news from school and home has been positive.  While family therapy seems to be ready to wrap up in a month, we'll probably stick out Carter's for a bit, just because he's set to participate in a social skills group over the next few months, and I think it's worth it to give him some time with that and continue to work on the impulsivity stuff his therapist is focused on.  But it feels so weird that just a few months ago we were still struggling--maybe not at prime pandemic levels when everyone was home 24/7, but back to something that resembled our pre-pandemic struggles--and then, it just sort of chilled out.  However, I don't think I realized how much until that therapy session.  Then it was like, "Wait, do we even need to be here?  Or is this all a short-term miracle and we'll be back to our old ways soon enough?"  That remains to be seen, but two months is a good start.  The oddest part is that it seemed to happen suddenly and with very little of our own effort.  From where I stand, these are the biggest factors:

1) Back to school - Getting both kids out of the house away from each other obviously presents a huge physical barrier to the constant onslaught of fights.  But I think getting Carter out of the house and back to school full-time was especially huge.  He struggled mightily last year for a lot of reasons, and I think remote school was a huge mental barrier for him.  He needs that constant engagement, and being in school helps.  I think he was also more starved than we thought for peer interaction, so getting back to friends on a daily basis has done wonders.  I think in general both the learning and the friendships have broadened his world so he now has something to talk about other than his online life.  For a while, he literally only talked about games and YouTubers and whatever he was seeing there, which was exhausting.  Now he can talk about school, friends, what he's been learning, and so much more.  He even asks me what I want to know about his day!  I think he just needed that consistent schedule, and having a teacher that gets him definitely hasn't hurt.

2) Medicine - Much like Jacob, Carter starting medication for his ADHD was a literal magic bullet for his school life.  Jacob's entire perspective on school changed when he could focus and his teacher wasn't constantly correcting him, and Carter has been much the same.  He enjoys school, doesn't complain about homework, and actually takes pride in how he's doing.  We found out at his parent teacher conference that he's a grade level behind in math (but literally almost everyone is because of the pandemic), but he's at grade level for reading, which boggles my mind since the kid struggled so badly for so long with reading.  He still won't choose to do it at home when screens and toys win out, but we're trying.  Writing is still a challenge, but his teacher seems unphased since he's a boy and everyone had limited writing opportunity last year with so much learning exclusively online.  I'm still going to keep an eye on it since I've always felt his fine motor skills were just a bit off, but it was encouraging that she didn't feel like his chicken scratch and awkward word placement were too far from the norm.  His teacher is very happy with his behavior and almost seemed surprised at how we were talking about last year's struggles.  He's like a totally different kid (in a good way), and it's been amazing to see what he can do when the playing field is evened out with a little medicine.  At home the medicine has less of a need (unlike Jacob, who needs it to keep his impulsive, sensory-seeking snark at bay), but I noticed when he started taking it, he started playing with toys more.  Previously, if a screen was an option, he would only choose that.  We had to actively take away screens for the toys to get even a look.  But around the time he started taking the medicine--even if he didn't have any in his system at that moment--he started voluntarily playing with his toys almost daily for the first time in more than a year.  I don't know why--maybe the medicine slowed his brain down enough to be like, "Oh, yeah, those can be cool,"--but it's been much better ever since.

3) The demise of the tablet - A while back, Carter got mad at his malfunctioning tablet, which was already on its last legs, and in a fit of frustration, banged on it with a Tinkertoy that was sitting nearby.  He didn't crack the screen, but the force was enough to scramble the components inside, and the screen looks completely fractured when it's turned on.  The death of that tablet happened to fix so many things, from Carter's screen time overload to Jacob's tendency to pick a fight when Carter was on it.  Don't get me wrong, Carter still gets his fair share of screens.  He loves to watch TV, and he is able to use Craig's phone most days.  But not having the full access to the tablet (which we honestly didn't limit for a lot of reasons) has shown us what's possible, and even if he does get a device at some point, I think we know enough now that we can and should limit it.  The biggest difference is that if Carter is in front of a screen now, it's generally down in the living room, and not in his bedroom.  Jacob was always endlessly frustrated by Carter being in his room on a device.  He would want to end that, so he'd go in to try to get Carter to play, or even just to talk to him, which inevitably resulted in some sort of battle.  He meant well but didn't handle it properly, and he'd feel rejected when Carter didn't want to play.  He wouldn't leave despite being asked nicely, and eventually one or the other would lash out physically, causing a problem.  This happened on a nearly daily basis despite our pleas for him to stop.  We often needed Carter occupied so we could work, and the tablet helped with that, but it turned out that removing the tablet and getting Carter out into the rest of the house actually fixed the bigger problem.  Maybe it should have been obvious, but when you're exhausted, in a state of permanent stress, and managing 18 months of pandemic survival mode, sometimes it's hard to think objectively.  I think we just underestimated Carter's ability to function without it, and also the degree of Jacob's obsession over it.  But then again, we could have done it months ago and neither of them might have been ready to move forward like this.  Who knows?

The boys certainly still fight, but it's at a level now that I feel like is closer to normal sibling stuff.  Jacob is still unhappy with Carter's screen time consumption, but it's mostly just complaining now instead of full-on battles.  Carter still gets annoyed by Jacob, and we'd still like him to play with Jacob a bit more often, but it's probably as calm as it's been since Jacob stopped ignoring him years ago--not completely calm, mind you, but manageable.

On top of that, Carter has become a much more pleasant kid to hang out with, which may coincide with the fact that we're not constantly bugging him to do schoolwork.  That run of remote school was tough, and on top of that no longer being a factor, he does most of his homework at the afterschool program.  We mostly just get to hang out and have fun.  He gives me hugs again, still grabs my hand once in a while, and even pulls my arm over his chest when we snuggle at night.  He loves going to playgrounds with me, and gets so excited about things like special meals from his favorite restaurants.  He feels more like the buddy I envisioned having when I tried to picture Jacob at this age while struggling with the infant and toddler years.  That never really happened with Jacob (though maybe Craig had it through their lacrosse bonding), so it feels nice to get some of it with Carter, particularly after such a rough year and a half where it seemed like I had lost him a bit.

Jacob is definitely becoming the moody teenager, but he's still pretty tolerable in a lot of ways.  Some teenagers are so hard to figure out, but I feel like most of what's frustrating with him is stuff we've always struggled with, as opposed to weird teen-onset stuff.  He has moments where his good judgment and care shines through, which is promising.  We still have a lot to work on, but it's nice when some of our hard work appears to be paying off!  

Add in that my hybrid work schedule gives me some better work-life balance right now, and things have definitely been a bit more settled than they have been for a very long time, probably ever in the two-kid era.  I keep telling myself to appreciate it and enjoy it, because things can change all too fast and I'd be stupid to assume this is permanent after years that would insist otherwise.  After all, Craig is on the cusp of his first real lacrosse season in almost two years, and I'm already getting nervous about weekends alone with the boys.  Not only will it be a physical adjustment for Craig and a mental one for me, but the boys are very attached to him and will likely have a hard time managing their frustrations with him being gone far more often.  Even his return to the office was a challenge for them, so entire weekends will be a whole new ballgame.  I'm hoping they'll lean on each other for company in the areas where Mom can't quite cut it (sports and video games, primarily), but that's probably asking a lot in the early stages of our "recovery".  We'll see how it goes, starting this weekend.

But, like I said, two months is a good start and more than I could have imagined a few months ago.  I sincerely hope some switch has finally flipped and both kids have figured out how to co-exist like normal human brothers.  It's a long time coming and this mama appreciates the break, however long it lasts.   

Stoked to Make it to Stokoe

This past weekend started out with a bit of a rough patch, with Craig having severe stomach and back pains late in the week (seems to have just been a 48-hour thing), rainy weather looking to spoil anything fun, and the news that Craig had been exposed yet again to COVID courtesy of a co-worker (this is case #3 for those keeping track, two of which he had direct exposure to).  Of course, legally he can't be told who it was, so it's hard for him to know just how much exposure he had and how big the risk is.  We're hoping he can figure it out this week, but he did test negative in a home rapid test on Sunday, so hopefully he'll be OK.  It's just one more thing we didn't need after all the sickness the previous week.

Because of the rain, our only plans for the weekend were some training for Jacob on Saturday morning, Carter's last soccer game Saturday afternoon, and going to our favorite gluten-free place to pick up October-only donuts for Jacob (plus pizza for dinner).  The rain was so bad overnight Friday and into Saturday that Carter's game got canceled, which surprised me because he played in the midst of similar rain over the summer, but maybe they figured the fall season just wasn't worth it.  That was actually a bit of a bummer with it being his last game.  I didn't really want to sit in the rain (though it did lighten up a bit when the game would have actually happened), but getting that year-end closure and proper good-bye is always nice.

We had come to the realization in the past week or so that it might be impossible to get to our favorite pumpkin patch this year.  The first weekend of October, Jacob had a tournament and Carter had soccer on Saturday, then Sunday was rainy.  Last weekend the illnesses pretty much ruled it out (as if soccer and the baptism weren't enough), and this weekend soccer and rain were getting in the way.  Next weekend is an out-of-town tournament, and the weekend after Craig will be working.  It seemed like it wouldn't work, so to be safe, on our way to dinner Saturday we stopped at a local farm stand and picked out some pumpkins.  We picked a medium-sized orange one to carve, a cool white one with green and orange-red veining that lays perfectly on its side, and a small green gourd with a cool shape.  They will all live on our porch for now.  While I was deciding, Craig decided it was a good photo op.

If you look close at this picture, you'll see Carter's fangs!  His lateral incisors came in funky and are slowly migrating down, but in the meantime he takes delight in showing off his fangs!  We have an old kids' meal toy of Dennis, the kid from Hotel Transylvania 2, wearing vampire gear, and when you pull his arm his fangs come out.  Carter noticed the resemblance the other day and held it up while showing his off!  That kid has a funky sense of humor!

Jacob wouldn't join us and smile, so here we are!

If you look to the far right, almost at the middle of the picture, you can see a pumpkin like the white/multicolored one we got.  They had some fun ones!

We very much enjoyed our dinner of pizza, a panini for Craig, and gluten-free donuts and cookies, although we've decided we should always just order the sheet pizza instead, particularly during donut season since they both need a day's advance ordering.  It's all just too good and one pizza is barely enough!

Sunday morning was Bible Sunday at church.  While Bible Sunday came with some fanfare when Jacob got his as part of his Sunday School class years ago, it's now a super interactive family experience.  We all came in for a 20 minute presentation, and then went to our own family tables where the elders handed out the Bibles.  The parents had to walk the kids through some notable elements of these Bibles (they have some really helpful book introductions and colored sections to group the books into themes) and then help them find family-favorite verses to highlight or bookmark.  I brought the Bible I got for Confirmation, which I also used for all of my college Bible studies, retreats, and Sundays at church, so it's full of underlines, highlights, and notes (not to mention devotional pages, bookmarks, family funeral pressed flowers, and other random memories).  I don't have high hopes that he will read it on his own often, but it was nice to give him a little head start.

I realized on Saturday that it looked like there might be a pleasant break from the rain on Sunday afternoon.  It would still be cool (mid-50s at best) and a bit blustery, and the ground could be pretty muddy after multiple inches of rain (if my flower pots were any indication), but it might be our only shot to get to Stokoe Farms, our favorite pumpkin patch.  I always choke a bit when buying the tickets because they're not cheap, but I guess as long as the kids keep asking, we'll keep going.  Jacob won't want to be seen in public with us soon, so I'm trying to savor what I can.  I recalled that last year he seemed to be losing interest a bit, but maybe it was just a bad day because he seemed eager again this year.  Sometimes I'm convinced that if it involves us spending money, the kids are always disproportionately interested regardless of what it is (sigh), but it's tradition and that seems to mean a lot to them--particularly Jacob.  So when the forecast seemed to hold, off we went!

At least the boys were eager to do some photo ops!

I've taken who knows how many of these selfies on the hayride/wagon ride, so of course we needed another!

Had to grab a family photo op that would fit all three guys, right before venturing into the corn maze.

We apparently really suck at corn mazes.  For the second year in a row, we followed the instructions (follow the left hedge) and still ended up popping out at the same "escape" exit rather than the actual one.  I don't know what our problem is!

As usual, the boys spent a bunch of time playing at the sports activity, although they oddly spent significantly more time throwing footballs than basketballs.  Even Carter held his own!

Jacob's throws were so hard that when they hit the backdrop, they would rebound directly back out and nearly hit us!  Kid's got an arm!  Craig was quietly bemoaning not keeping him in baseball, because he's pretty sure he could have been a good pitcher.

This game of tetherball looks pretty innocent, but a) Craig dominated in his quest to wrap it around completely; and b) as we were wrapping up, Jacob went to grab the rope as Carter was apparently still hitting it (even though we were done), and because it moved, Jacob slammed his hand up against the metal pole.  Given how cold it was, it really hurt and he was pretty grumpy for a bit.  I figured that would derail the whole day, but once he warmed up a bit, he was right back into it.

Wouldn't be a visit without shooting produce at targets.  We slingshotted giant apples (apparently they were out of small pumpkins), and then shot smaller ones.  If you zoom in on this picture, you can see Carter's apple mid-shot, just a little above the end of the gun!

We somehow missed the camels, but did catch a glimpse of this giant kangaroo, who was part of a hands-on (extra charge) experience featuring a baby kangaroo and a couple other animals.  This guy was sleeping like this apparently, because he definitely seemed to be dreaming.  But how he was lounged out like that cracked us up!

We had fun as usual on the zipline and the Billy Goat Mountain slides.  Our family races on the zipline and racing slides are quite competitive, and the tube slide is always good for a thrill.  

As we walked back to the front of the farm, Carter remembered this tree house with a slide.  I went down it too, and it was pretty fast!

We all did rides on the big slides out front next to the hay bale mountain, and I have to admit, the view from up top was gorgeous, even without the fall colors!

Jacob insisted we take a picture on the hay bales, which I have often tried to do, and actually it did make our Christmas card last year, as I recall.  So we did it again!

Carter had initially passed on jumping on the giant pillow, but Jacob convinced him.  It didn't last long, mind you, between Jacob inexplicably knocking him over and both kids having trouble staying on their feet.  But Carter seemed to be having fun for a bit!

The boys ran off to fake-milk a cow, and had no interest in seeing the farm animals with me.  But the sheep and tiny goat were cute...

And another tiny goat!

The cow was very sweet and surprisingly soft to pet.

I love the emus, John and Deere.  They're always so oddly photogenic.  Such intense stares!

After getting some apple cider slushies, we wrapped things up and headed to the store for a quick look around.  There happened to be this armadillo on display.  I'm not sure I've ever seen one in person and I found it quite interesting to watch, from his little "helmet" to the way he wiggled around.

And with that, kettle corn in hand, we were off.  I guess I feel lucky we got at least one more full family trip in before the teenage moodiness creeps in.  Jacob's an odd kid sometimes so maybe this will be one of the few things that survives, but I doubt it--it gets everyone eventually, I think!  At least Carter still has a few fun years left in him!  But it's always stressful to worry about getting there among all the busyness and cruddy weather that October can bring, so I'm thankful that's in the books for another year.

As a side note, while we were waiting in line for the zip line, Carter asked me how long we've been going to Stokoe.  I smiled as I remembered our first trip, way back in 2007.  Craig and I had free passes from him having the Farm's reindeer (with a baby!) out to a Rochester Rattlers "Christmas in July" game that summer.  We had no idea something like this existed, at least not to this degree--I guess we didn't have many friends with kids at the time and we weren't on social media back then.  We had a blast, even as two adults without kids.  

Gosh, we were just a couple kids.  We didn't know at the time, but I was newly pregnant with Jacob.  Our best guess is that it happened sometime the previous weekend, as the prior Friday I had a negative test and started some medication early the next week.  The period that was supposed to come after the medicine never came, but I didn't figure out why for a few more weeks after the Stokoe trip.  I always look back at this set of pictures--the last set of us together before we knew--in awe that so much was happening and we had no idea!  How times have changed!  Now we have two big kids and are only a few years away from winding down this entire pumpkin patch stage of our lives...at least until grandkids, I guess!  

It's been a pretty great run, though--we've only missed two years since we made it a point to start going when Jacob was two, and those two years we did check out different options so we weren't pumpkin-less.  I know weather and schedules were a factor back then, too, but I can't help but wonder if we didn't exactly make it a priority those two years, which happened to fall around the time when Jacob's behavior troubles were really starting to ramp up.  Maybe the massiveness of Stokoe felt like a bit much, not to mention the risky financial investment with such an unpredictable kid.  Free stuff probably just seemed easier.  But Stokoe will always be special--and looking back through our pictures just now was pretty amazing.  I do appreciate the handful of other places we've checked out, too--even if none compare in the kids' minds.  

It always might seem like just a few hours on a fall day where we spend too much money and wrangle kid attitudes, but it turns out those afternoons are what family memories are made of all these years later.  And I think that's why the kids insist on going--Stokoe is fall to them.  So, it'll keep happening until they prefer it doesn't.  And thankfully, this was not the year!