Hayracks and Pumpkins

It's been another weekend of Fall Fun and Games. The leaves are changing color, the weather is getting cooler, and it seems like everywhere we go we get to mooch of everyone else's food. Our fellow Jitterbug friends Merinda and Becky Ives had birthdays over the weekend. That naturally meant dancing down at JNO on Friday night, and then heading over to Dave and Buster's on Saturday night for just a little bit of mayhem.

Vivian and I stayed only for the food, ordering an appetizer and a coupler drinks, and then stuffing ourselves with the leftover food nobody else wanted. We weren't the only ones joining in the spoils of someone else's dinner. Mark got to have nearly an entire meal gathered up from extra plates, and there were plenty of tempting desserts floating across the table.

After dinner, Vivian and I drove up to Blair for the annual Great Adventures Hayrack Ride That Sticks Gets Inside Every Crevice event. I went on this last year and was picking stray pieces of straw out of my clothes for weeks afterwards, so this time Vivian and I decided to go on the hayrack that didn't require signing some kind of legal waiver. It was still just as nice and romatic, and much easier to get out of my hair afterwards.



Continuing in the spirit of fall fun, Vivian and I headed with our mutual friends to Vala's Pumpkin patch to enjoy what turned out not to be a day full of thunderstorms (as had been forecast). It rained all day last year when we went to Vala's, so this time around we got to enjoy such things as the pedal carts and the balloon jump, which was great fun and a terrific workout. It left me sweatier than I usually get while dancing. They also had a tremendous corn maze. I ventured into the tall stalks with Hugh, who for some reason insisted on holding the map the entire time while constantly forgetting where we were in the maze. We didn't seem to get as lost as our friends, however, who wandered into the maze without a map and seemed amazed that Hugh and I found our way out after only half an hour.

It was another fun weekend, with more on the way. This week had been a bit of a bummer, however, since my dear Ford Taurus decided to leak all its transmission fluid onto the HyVee parking lot, rendering it undrivable. Say a prayer for the Beige Bomber and hope he's fixable once again.