Pumpkin Patch Adventures

Ten miles outside of Portland lies a pastoral and beautiful place called Sauvie Island (read more @ .http://www.sauvieisland.org/about-sauvie-island/). Connected to Portland by a small bridge this stretch of land in the Columbia River makes you feel like you have stumbled upon a treasure protected from another time and place. As the cumulus clouds and fog, which have become so familiar to us in the past weeks, drifted between the hills surrounding Portland we drove onto Sauvie Island. Farms that had boasted fields of blackberries and lavender only two months ago now put forth their fall show with varieties of squash and corn and of course- PUMPKIN PATCHES. To the girls' delight we pulled into the first farm we saw and hopped on a tractor for a hayride around the farm. We caught five minutes of blue sky (the first I've seen in two weeks), hundreds of bright orange pumpkins, and even some ghostly white ones. We came home with a white pumpkin which Rynn has decided will become our Ghost Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween. The rain chased us off and on, but that didn't stop us from "getting lost" in a HayMaze, drinking apple cider, and meeting a calf, two ducks, a turkey, two lambs, and a tortoise. A grand adventure!
Meanwhile, Jason gets aggressive with a crowbar to find a sermon in a file cabinet with a lost key. They say church planting can be stressful, but I didn't think it would come to this! Perhaps he has a future with Rick's Lock& Key.