Two weeks ago Aaron decided it was time to get into his “rainy day fund”. Given our crappy financial situation, I guess every day this whole year could have qualified for the “rainy day”, but Aaron was saving it for a splurge.
Last weekend, Aaron, his brother and their friend went on a backpacking trip in the Sierras to Cattle Creek. No people, no phones, no distractions, no stress. He thought this would be a worthy cause to bust open the bank.
For years Aaron has had the habit of saving his change and putting it in a glass water jug at the end of the day.
The change will accumulate for years and when the jug looks full enough, he’ll find a worthy cause and put the money toward that (usually something fun!).
Somehow, it seems I’m the one that gets stuck with the task of rolling all of the coins. Luckily this time we had an automatic change counter. In the years before, I got to do everything by using just my brain power and sorting skills.
Ev went down for a nap and I got to work rolling. I got quite a pile going by the time Ev woke up. I decided it might be fun to have him help me put the coins in the counter.
This was a mistake.
He was more interested in throwing the coins, trying to eat them, and putting them in Aaron’s hiking boot.
After the coins got boring, he went on systematically emptying out every drawer in our bedroom. By the time I got to a good stopping point, our room had been ransacked and I had to wait until he went to bed to put our room back together.
By the time Aaron got home from work, I had rolled enough for him to go on his trip. The guys had a great time backpacking. I have to admit, I was dying that I couldn’t go. We backpacked there years ago, and that has to be my all time favorite trip we ever took. I told him to take lots of photos for me, and I’ll just dream about hiking in the mountains. Sigh…
Last night, we took Ev to the pumpkin patch. The one we usually go to was not open this year, so we were forced to go with Plan B. We only knew of one other patch in the area, so we headed there.
When we pulled up, we were greatly disappointed. It wasn’t lit very well, there weren’t very many pumpkins to choose from, my camera wasn’t working right and I had to use the flash on every photo, so they didn’t turn out that great.
We were hoping to get just a little Ev sized pumpkin, but they only had medium or large ones.
Ev was more interested in the cars whizzing by on the side of the road and staring at the other pumpkin patch parishioners. Everett was a little shy and nervous walking around by himself, so we had to coax him into exploring the patch. 
Ev likes nothing more than to have his dad hold him. This boy loves his dad!
We picked out a pumpkin, let Ev give it the durability test shake and headed home before he turned into a popsicle! It was cold! Despite the setbacks, we had some great family time and picture proof that we did take Ev to the pumpkin patch, however lame it may have been.
