Poof! went the pumpkin patch

Traditions are funny.

When does an event change from something you've done once or twice to a tradition that has to be repeated every year? And what do you do when the tradition becomes more of a hassle than the fun it originally was? Do you keep doing it because it's tradition? Or try something new, letting your tradition evolve as life changes?

The "pumpkin patch" has been a tradition since before Sawyer was born. I think it started because the church that hosts it is very accessible and the pumpkins are very visible. I didn't have to go hunting for a a couple pumpkins to decorate our porch. And the first year or two we went, they had lots of variety ... tall and small pumpkins, fat and skinny pumpkins, even white and greenish pumpkins to complement the orange.



When Sawyer was about 10 months old, we took him there to see the pumpkins. He wasn't really walking, so we could plop him down and take lots of cute pictures and we were golden. Those are still some of my favorite pictures of him.

The next year, I felt like we needed to go back there ... partly just to have some continuity in the photos and partly because we had considered sending Sawyer to the church's preschool and I felt a little bad that we hadn't chosen it. I got a few cute pictures that year, but it was getting harder.

The next year, well, we'd been there twice. We certainly couldn't go somewhere else. The pictures were still OK, but I had to work hard for them. And the variety was gone. None of the cool white pumpkins I had found those first years.



This year may be our last. I fear we're outgrowing this pumpkin patch. Sawyer still likes looking at the pumpkins, but he wants to climb all over them. And pick them up. And I spend the whole time telling him to quit for fear he ruins a $50 pumpkin.

He certainly doesn't want to sit still for pictures. Especially when it's hot. And I've dressed him in fall clothes ... because that's the tradition.



So our trip this year was the quickest ever. We pulled up, fired off a couple dozen photos, poked heads through the wooden ghost and witch, picked our pumpkins, paid and left. 

I swore I wasn't going to spend much on pumpkins because they're pumpkins and will eventually be compost, but we still somehow managed to leave with like five, including one of the rare, expensive white and orange ones I love so much.



Will we come back next year? It's hard to say.

Like everything that goes with having children (who seem to grow overnight), maybe it's time for our tradition to change. Like something that was once magical ... changing at the stroke of midnight ... back into a pumpkin.