October wanes

Sorry we've been a bit rubbish about updating! There haven't been a lot of departures from routine this month. But with D-day for Pockets coming in just four weeks, we decided we ought to try to get in one more trip to the zoo, before we are on Blacksburg lockdown for a long while. So off we went this past Saturday to Mill Mountain!

Fall foliage in Blacksburg: better by far than that in Maryland, but I'm still jonesing for some of the brilliance of upstate NY... ah well. At least there isn't the ridiculous Indian Summer of the Baltimore area. Temperatures feel quite right for late October.


So, without preamble.... A Zebu!

These guys are delightful. M. thought so too.


Someone get this monkey some Prozac... he was the only critter that wasn't happily frisking about on this crisp morning. Most of the animals seem to vastly prefer the Autumn, and I don't blame them.

Miles' old friends, the Noble Goats.



If you ask him why the leaves have turned color, he says "Because a-Fall!" I'll miss it when he ceases to separate words and phrases with "a-". His grasp of official grammar is growing daily, which is both impressive and sad, for me.

Miles contemplates the view.

Ok, if you had asked him anything about what he planned to do at the zoo, what animal he would see, etc, you would quickly learn that the TRAIN (da 'Rain!!!!) is the Number One, Only Real reason to go to a zoo.

He looooves it. Rode it twice, wanted more, that's all there is to say about that. His favorite zoo animal: the 'Rain.

Evening was pumpkin carving time! This is his first time.

He participated about as much as his strong aversion to getting yucky would allow. In THIS respect he is too like me, I'm afraid.
Doesn't the smell of pumpkin take you back to childhood? Every time?

Jon pretty much did it singlehandedly while we watched in admiration. Papa's a hero.

About as much physical interaction as he wanted with it, though he loves to talk about the pumpkin's facial features and is quite fond of it now.

We lit it for him at night and tried to get him in a picture next to it... yeah, he wouldn't go within five paces of it when it was lit up and the lights were off. I suppose it is a bit creepy. But that's kind of the idea, after all.

Coming up: Our second Halloween in Bburg!