Howdy, Halloween

I know Halloween is long gone - Brennan's trick-or-treat pumpkin is almost empty, and our warm & sunny October has been replaced with chilly & wet November - but we've been a little sidelined the past few weeks. It's mix-and-match time - guess which family member has had the following:

1. a stomach bug

2. an endoscopic sinus procedure

3. an ear infection

4. a nasty cold, firmly believed by the sufferer to be a result of tending to all of the above

So this picture of Lucie, enjoying the toys while her big brother is at school, seems very long ago indeed. Below is her 10 month photo:
We had quite a time getting her to hold still.
We needed a pumpkin, of course, so we made the trek to the same pumpkin patch in Healdsburg we visited 2 years ago. They've stepped up their game a bit, with a farm animal petting zoo, a tower of straw bales for climbing, and pony rides.

Lucie enjoyed grabbing handfuls of straw and attempting to eat it.

My attempt to pose Bren and Lucie smiling together by the corn and pumpkins was a near complete failure. What I got instead was more straw-eating from one, and the other looking like he'd just spotted He Who Walks Behind the Rows.
So we scrapped it and moved on to the tractors.
After some tractor "driving", Brennan noticed a couple little girls taking a pony ride, and announced "I want to ride a horse". I didn't believe it for a second, given our last attempt at pony riding (at the Fenton July 4th Freedom Fest) was aborted due to a last minute change of heart and sudden onset of boneless-ness. But I guess someone's come a long way since summer:

Despite the serious expression, I think he even enjoyed it more than riding the pumpkin wagon.

Sticking with the pumpkin theme, here's Lucie in a cute little jack-o-lantern dress. She's received so many cute dresses, I wish I could put her in them more often - but since she's decided to stick with her weird one-foot-pushing crawl, she tends to get hung up in the hem of a dress.

We celebrated Halloween by trick-or-treating on Belvedere street - although it was a close call, given the Stomach Bug Weekend that preceded the big day.

Sheriff Woody was accompanied by Cowboy Mommy (sorry, no photographic evidence, but my chaps got a number of compliments), a little Alien from Pizza Planet -
who spent her night picking off her eyeballs -
- and Paul McCartney from 1967 or something. Which if you have to ask, please know it will take a while to explain and will only be satisfying to a Beatles fan.
I wish I had more photos, but I had a tough time juggling the camera, the stroller, and my glass of wine. We'll just file that one under "first world problems" and hope for better luck next year, once Lucie is walking.