Fall has it all - football games. We live next to a high school and can hear football games from our house. I love it! Listening to the band practice weeknights for the football games.
There is a hunting club just south of our house. Pretty much for the next 3 months we will hear a constant barage of guns going off - most of the day. Whenever we are outside now the next 3 months we are nervous and tend to walk at the bottom of hills and such, and being afraid of stray bullets.Halloween is so much fun!! We always love trick or treating. One house that we go to has really nice people and really good candy, but one guy always stands between the sidewalk and the house with a mask and a chainsaw. The sidewalk being full of kids being both fascinated and terrified of this man, and trying to decide whether facing possible death is worth candy. In the end the kids always go about 50/50. On that same street is a big house which strikes terror in children all around. It is old and two stories, dark, dark brown with big overgrown trees surrounding it. No one has ever seen the owners - they never hand out candy, but every child and parents absolutely must run past their house - never walk! At Christmas, and I kid you not, they put dolls dressed in Christmas clothes in the window with their arms up. It really does look like the dolls were trying to get out.
But there are other things in Fall to look forward to.
Like burning leaves. I love it!! It covers the air in the best smell in the whole world. I remember one year in particular when our daughter Tatum and I were spending a Saturday "helping" my husband burn leaves. Somehow, a small child running around fire in a small yard all day had started stressing my husband out. So to keep the peace I decided to whisk her away to a movie - that should keep us out of his hair for a couple of hours. And oh Joy! Enchanted was playing!!! Tatum and i had both really been wanting to see that! We got to the theater just in time. It was packed, but we did manage to find two seats together in the middle of a row, surrounded by people off to the side. At first we were really packed in like sardines, but it was worth it. However, as the movie went on I realized we had more and more space. People were literally scooting away from us and cramming themselves against the wall. Then did I realize what we must smell like after being outside burning leaves all day. No, we didn't' change before we got there - I just didn't' think about it! Oh well, we gave them a movie they're not going to forget for a while.Another great thing about fall are - hayrides! Aren't they the best? On every hayride there is always a mishap or two, hayrides rarely go smoothly. One of three things is going to happen. 1. A wheel is going to get stuck in mud, and everyone always has to get off and push. 2. Somewhere along the route the hayride will just mysteriously stop. Someone on the wagon starts speaking incoherently about something scary, and then some wise guy jumps out at you and tries to scare you. Who knows how long that poor guy has to stand in that field too waiting for the wagon to come. or 3. The tractor will actually break down and you have to walk back. That happened to me when Tatum was a little baby. We were at my Uncle's house and he took the family on a super hay ride down to a creek bed for a bonfire. We got there just fine. Roasted fall food on the fire - wonderful! When it was time to go everyone climbed back on the trailer for the ride back. Only...not. Tractor broke down! And that is how I spent one chilly moonlit night in October cutting through a field on foot.
But our most eventful hayride ever was at a toddler's birthday party mid October. We started late afternoon down a gravel road - it was cold! The driver cut though a field in the middle of nowhere. In a field in the middle of nowhere you expect to find livestock or wild animals maybe. What you don't expect to find is two cars - parked next to each other - with the drivers, both men, standing talking to each other. In a field in the middle of nowhere. Not anywhere near a road. There is no was they weren't dealing drugs. What else could it be - except maybe disposing of a dead body. And here comes this hayride bumping by at a speed of 15 m.p.h. And there is no way we could have gone any faster. if they wanted to have caught us on foot and kill us - they could have. I was really doing some praying then! We got past the crime scene and onto another gravel road. But apparently it wasn't the right gravel road. By now it is late evening. So the driver had to just head in the direction of the highway - with all of us still looking over our shoulders for the junkie/hitmen to find us - we couldn't have stood a chance. But they didn't and that is how we came to be driving throughout the middle of a small town, down the main highway after dark. Awkardly waving at people at gas stations who were watching us.
I am looking forward to more the same the next couple of months! Our kids have both outgrown trick or treating, so this year we are having our Halloween party on trick or treating night - and am leaving the candy handing out to the teenagers. Heaven help us! I have a feeling they will give me lots of good material for another post.
When I Am Afraid, I Put My Trust In You
Psalms 56:3
(This bible verse was selected by a sweet 8 year old girl)
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