For my birthday, Jim tried to plan a fabulous surprise trip to Paris, but exorbitant half term prices and my inability to go far from the hospital without feeling paranoid messed that plan up. Then the Paris strikes started so our trip probably would have been aborted anyway. Luckily, my favorite thing to do is to hunker down with my adorable family and I had a really nice and low key birthday with Evie and Jim in London. Evie and I went to paint pottery with some of our friends (she was a super star pottery painter), had some birthday lunch and then napped until Jim got home from work. Then we had present opening, Evie went to bed (always cause for celebration at the end of a busy day) and Jim and I got take out Indian food. It was a great day and I was very happy to be 34!
Another highlight (in my pregnant, out of control, sweet tooth dominated state) were the chocolate cupcakes that Jim made for me. YUMMY!
The next day, with our new found mobility via Jim's UK license and our Streetcar membership, we drove out to a farm/kids' entertainment center to spend some time with farm animals and troop around a very muddy pumpkin patch. Evie held her first guinea pig and was charmed by the little squeaky noises he made. She also tried to touch his eyeballs. We are working on this touching eyeballs obsession...eyes are very exciting, apparently.
But the real highlight for her were the 'BABY CHICKENS!!!!!!' If she could have gotten into the cage with them, she would have.
Additionally, Evie was thrilled to squelch around in the mud and find the perfect pumpkin. In fact, she found TWO perfect pumpkins and somehow managed, with her cuteness and enthusiasm, to get away with two pumpkins when only one was included as part of her ticket. Pumpkins are a new favorite obsession during this pumpkin focused season and she is very eager to announce to anyone around who will listen that she sees one.
A pumpkin patch family picture (in which I kind of look like a pumpkin myself at 37 weeks pregnant):
She also scored a free rubber ducky (it pays to be cute and smiley), which we raced down a trough by pumping a water pump. This was cause for great happiness!
At the end of our visit, Jim and Evie went down a big slide...and then, to my surprise, Evie did it by herself! I have video footage (you can see by my jerky videoing how unprepared I was to see an elated Evie sailing down the giant slide by herself ), which I will soon be able to share on this blog because we finally bought the program we need to get the videos off my camera. Stay tuned! For now, you have this not so great picture of Jim and Evie on the slide to prepare you for the excitement of the video.
Happy fall!
