As we left for
Julian on Saturday morning, I wondered if it would ever stop raining....
But, only a few mintues later the sun began to break through the clouds. The sky was beautiful and I knew it was going to be a good day.
As we got further away from the coast, and closer to the mountains, I was reminded that there were mountains here. Something I forget living so close to the coast. But the mountains
here are really different than any I've lived by before. They have these huge boulders sticking out them and almost look like they are from another world. But the change of scenery was good.
As we pulled into the
pumpkin patch, I was excited to see that there were only a couple other cars ther
e. We had the whole thing practically to ourselves. We went over to the petting zoo first - Harrison decided to have one of his
I-wont-go-near-animals-days, so he observed from a distance. Noah was really intrigued by the animals, but lost it when a rooster he was admiring cock-a-doodle dooed near him.
The boys really enjoyed looking at all the pumpkins and farm equipment. The farm had dogs sleeping all over it - I almost stepp
ed on a few. It was just nice to be out in the country - it really reminded me of my childhood in Corvallis.
We loaded back in the car and started to make our way up to Julian. Julian is a quaint little town up in the mountains, famous for it's
pies. We were stopping at an
apple orchard first to do u-pick apples with the boys. Unfortunately, it started to rain again on our way up, but it was only a drizzle when we got out of the car. Luckily we brought our
double jogger, so the boys were snug as a bug inside the rain cover with their jackets and blankets, and by the time we go all checked in and got over to where the apples were, the rain stopped, and Harrison and Noah both
got out and took t
urns picking apples. At $10 for a smaller than 5 pound bag, they weren't bargain apples, but they were yummy. We didn't feel too bad sampling a few as we picked at that price. When we had our fill of picking, we headed out again, and just in time. It started to rain again. Julian was just another 5 minutes up the road - but it was raining pretty good when we got up there. The boys were again bundled up in the stroller, and I guess they've never seen a stroller with a rain cover in Julian before, because everyone we saw stopped and
commented on it. "That's the way to go." or "What a good idea!" I mean EVERYONE. And there were a lot of people there. We had to park a couple blocks off the main street on a dirt road, there were so many people there. It was getting colder by the minute, so we grabbed some lunch at a local deli, and then I went and stood in line for the reason for visiting Julian - Pie.
The line for buying pie was at least 20 people long, but the smell of warm apple pie on a cold day was enough to keep me motivated to wait the 30 minutes. We got two pies to go, and headed home.
As we arrived home, and were walking in the house, I asked Harrison, "What did we do today?" He responded without hesitation, "We bought a pie." Apparently a trip to Julian wasn't much more significant to him than a trip to
Marie Callender's. But for me, the memories of the day will go far beyond the pie.
Mollie
I know it's taken me way to long to put up this post - but at least I'm getting it up before Thanksgiving! We had a great Halloween. Harrison was a "Dragonsaurus" (Dazzle the Dinosaur has this fictional character, one of Harrison's favorite books), and Noah had a last minute costume change (thanks to Old Navy putting their costumes 50% off the week of Halloween) to be a cowboy. One of Har
rison's best friends, Joshua, happened to be Prince Phillip (from Sleeping Beauty), the Dragon Slayer, so it was pretty cute to see a dragon running around with a dragon slayer at the play ground. We actually had quite a few activities that the boys wore there costumes to. On Thursday there was a playgroup costume party at the local park. That's where I took the above pictures. It was like 85 at noon during the party, so I had to convince Harrison to take off his fleece dragon costume shortly after we arrived. He reall
y wanted to wear it, but I thought he might get heat stroke running around in it. Then on Saturday we had the ward's trunk-or-treat party. Harrison really enjoyed that - at one point he was running around with Joshua and Chloe, and we realized we had a princess, a prince and a dragon. We couldn't have planned it any better if we tried! On Monday there was a party at our housing complex. More candy and friends, but at least this party was in the evening, so Harrison enjoyed wearing his costume the 
whole time. That night we had fun carving our pumpkin. Harrison wanted to make sure it was a happy jack-o-lantern, and not a scary one. He was really frightened a couple of times when we went into stores that had Halloween decorations up, but whenever he saw a smiling jack-o-lantern, he would exclaim excitedly, "That one is nice!" So we made a happ
y smiley jack-o-lantern. On Halloween evening Harrison first went to his friend Benny's house to play (we do a trade once a week) and he insisted on wearing his costume. Layne, Benny's mom, said he didn't take it off the whole time he was there (almost 2 hours) hood and all. So he came home, and had a quick dinner, and then we got our first trick-or-treater. Harrison was ready to go, so we set up a bowl of candy by our front 
door, and we were off. Unlike last year, when Harrison was almost too frightened to wait for the door to open, this year he was so anxious, he almost ran right into several people's apartments when they opened their door. A few people would remark at what a scary dragon he was, to which he would reply, "It's okay. I'm just a pretend dragon." Noah mostly just hung out in Sam's arms and looked cute as he sucked on a candy bar that was unopened. He has been obsessed by the word "baa" lately, and is convinced that any animal, not just sheep, say it. So while we were out trick-or-treating, I thought I would see if he would say boo. And he did, it was so cute. I guess I taught him that trick a few days too late - he kept saying it for about a week, but now I think he's moved on to moo. A few pe
ople were thoughtful enough to give the kids that came by candy-free give aways - like bubbles, and yo-yo's, and rings. Harrison's very favorite "favor" was a bouncy ball that had a little red and blue light that flashed when you bounced it. He exclaimed, "It lights up the night!" He also remarked as we were gathering the huge bag of candy as we went, "and I can only have one piece a day, or I will be sick." a little tidbit of information I had told him earlier in the week. He ended up eating 3 pieces that night, but I thought that was pretty amazing given the huge amount of candy he collected. And Noah just got whatever he could glean from sucking on a wrapper for 1/2 an hour. I call that a Halloween success!
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