It was a beautiful fall day yesterday. I keep thinking these beautiful, brisk, colorful days will end soon and give way to the cold and blustery of winter but they keep hanging on. I'm not complaining a bit. I love this time of year. Blaubeere and kids came over yesterday. And Scwatzbeere and his wife came over as well. And we all went out to a friend's home just outside of town and picked up some pumpkins. This friend has what you'd call a hobby farm - he's got several acres and grows stuff on them, as well as raising some simple livestock, like chickens, in his case. Anyway, he went all out this year with his pumpkins and ended up with thousands of them. He donated enough to Brombeere's school to cover the entire kindergarten, all the classes. The kids had a great time picking out each their own - the teachers went and brought in what they figured would be enough and then the kids got to pick the ones they wanted. Quite the good time. 
Anyway, back to the story at hand. The lot of us all got together and went out to his place to see what he had left. He had brought a whole lot out front, by the road. He had pumpkins of several kinds, along with plenty of gourds, big and small, all gathered together along his driveway. So we all spent some time looking over what he had and picking out what we wanted. We let the kids pick one pumpkin for carving and then another just for fun and decoration. And a gourd, too, if they wanted. 
Blaubeere's littlest was fun to watch. She'd get right in the middle of the pile of pumpkins and pick one out she liked. She'd carry it around a bit and then throw it down and pick another. There were some pretty big ones there but the rule was they had to be able to carry it themselves. 
When they had all picked out what they wanted we went out into the field behind the house because the friend had told us there were other gourds still out there they hadn't brought in yet and we were welcome to look them over and choose from them if we wanted. So most of us spend some time out in the field looking over the selection there as well as what was by the road.
Finally we had all made our choices and headed back to house for some dinner and the best part, carving up the beauties we'd picked out. This is where the creative juices really get flowing, to say nothing of the pumpkins innards.
As you may know, opening, cleaning out, and carving pumpkins can be rather messy. These were no exception. We spread newspaper all over the kitchen table, dug out all our pumpkin carving tools, include those Blaubeere brought with her, and everyone went to town. Between the time it took to work on your own pumpkin and the time it took to help the younger kids with carving their own, we were at it for a couple of hours. As it was described later, "There's a party at Mother's, a good time was had by all!"
