Pumpkins, Cookies, and Inappropriate Behavior

Hey players...

With Halloween a week off, the Houghs decided it was time, once again, to engage in some good ol' fashioned gourde-wranglin' and nab our pumpkins for the season. And, once again, we opted to hit up the upscale, creepy, Edward Scissorhands-esque suburb of Celebration for our Halloween scavenging.

Celebration - for those of you who reside outside of Orange County - or may otherwise not understand the aforementioned descriptors of said suburb - is a geographical area in southwest Orlando where most of the Disney executives live. There's no trash in the streets, there's no hobos pan-handling at stoplights for loose change and cigarettes, and there's an eerie amount of white people afoot per capita.

See? Edward Scissorhands.

Anyway, while Celebration may have a shortage of, say, booming Reggaeton pumping from Honda Civics, it more than makes up for it in average household incomes. People in Celebration are loaded, and, accordingly, every community event they coordinate is extraordinarily awesome.

Take, for example, their community pumpkin patches...

As we did last year with my parents, this year Kris, myself and the tax deductions decided to hit up the Celebration Presbyterian Church's Pumpkin Patch for Halloween. They have a solid selection to choose from, and they set everything up with tons of seasonal decor so that horribly-obnoxious parents can take hundreds of pictures of their kids drooling about, smearing their grubby paws all over everything.

You will never see a higher concentration of digital SLR cameras per capita anywhere else in the continental United States in your life. I guarantee it.

Anyway, we planned on meeting up with the Tayler family while we were there. Their son has been a classmate (and beau) of the Cannonball for a few years now, and they're also seasoned toddler-herders. Below is a crap-load of snapshots and video snippets to highlight our hour and a half of over-priced, kid-friendly, gourd acquisition.

Enjoy:

Abby's post-freak out, impromptu nap... prior to leaving for the 'Patch

Rock-hard determination.

At the Great Pumpkin Patch

Celebration Presbyterian Pumpkin Patch

Inappropriate behavior...

Houghtoberfest

...This year I made sure I didn't poke my head through the Witch hole. I ain't no lady.

_______________________

Later that day, after our two disaster-bomb children had taken their usual not-as-long-as-it-should-have-been nap, Kris decided it'd be a good time to throw together some Halloween cookies. Seeing how this combines two of ours kids' favorite things in life - art and sugar - it should come to no surprise that our kids took to this activity like Michael Jackson to a young boy*.

Observe the process...

Stay tuned for next week, folks - when the Houghs don over-priced shreds of poorly-made fabric and go out into the public in order to obtain sugar handouts from complete strangers!

- Brian

* You heard me...