By mommie2zs in Buds — Oct 22, 2016

Transitions

A friend told me her college sophomore daughter wouldn’t be flying home for Thanksgiving. She wasn’t upset. She was pondering this transition.

This will be the first time their three children won’t all be home for Thanksgiving.

I remembered this conversation when our crew and I headed to the pumpkin patch this last week. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, over 80 degrees by the time we arrived at Lucky Ladd Farm.

We knew we wanted to choose our pumpkins, but we hadn’t decided if we’d make a full day of the farm or not. We ate our picnic lunch before walking from the parking lot toward the building to check in. A large sign board posts the costs for entrance, and as we looked at it, Buster said, “Wow, that’s expensive.”

And that seemed to set the tenor for the visit. It was a beautiful day. We were glad to be out and picking pumpkins was going to be fun, but paying a significant amount of money to spend a few hours there wasn’t at the top of our priority list.

At least, it wasn’t at the top of Buster and Monkey’s priority list. The two oldest children are starting to move past this sort of outing. Yessa and I, we would have spent the day there, no problem.

We have reached the fine tipping point of needing outings that meet the needs of youngest and olders. On this day, the pumpkin patch was voted down. We picked our pumpkins, then headed home.

Yessa pulled this in from the parking lot to be kind, and we were grateful to have it to carry our pumpkins back to the car.

This picture below pulled me back through time to one of my beloved picture from trips to the farm from the past:

A little different from the iconic picture of old.

Our trips to the pumpkin patch in VA might include ice cream. (I love this picture.)

And as I searched for the above picture, I felt the yin and yang of love for the pumpkin patch trips of the past and joy in the point life has brought us to.

These memories of past visits to pumpkin patches have me feeling slightly melancholy. I have truly loved every age and transition with these people I am blessed to live with. I sometimes wish I could jump back into these individual moments and relive them. (Which is why I write this blog, right?)