Pumpkins and Family night ants

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Thursday, October 14, 2004
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Around here, Monday is family night. Not just for our family but
our church encourages it. They say, “Setting aside time for the
family to be together can build a solid family foundation. Choose
one night a week to be family night. Be consistent in reserving
this time for the family. It should be a time focused exclusively
on the family—a time when the television is left off and phone
calls go unanswered.” Well, that’s our Monday night. And it seems
to work for us.

Now, if you’ve been with us awhile, you know that son #3 is our
‘holiday excitable’ child. He lives for the ‘kid’ holidays. The day
after Easter, he’ll be asking about the 4th of July. On the 5th of
July, he’ll be asking about Halloween. After Halloween, it’s non-
stop Christmas talk. For weeks he’s been bugging us to go and buy
pumpkins. So for family night last night we decided to get in the
old van and zoom down to the grocery store and get 6 pumpkins. On
the sidewalk outside of the store, there were 8 chest high cartons
on pallets with signs that said ‘Pumpkins 8¢ / lb’. That’s a good
price around here. So we were excited to dive in and find what we
could. The only problem was, what was left was really picked over.
Some were mashed, some were moldy, and few had stems on them.

There was another family picking over what was left, and we were
all about ready to go to a different store. Just then a half-sized
semi truck (That would be a quarter-truck??) pulled up. I asked the
driver if there were pumpkins inside. He said yes, but they had to
get the forklift first. That took about 10 minutes.

What happened next was one of the strangest things I’ve seen. It
was like a piece of candy dropped on a playground. The ants just
know it’s there and are attracted to it. When the truck pulled up,
there were just two families. By the time the forklift got there 10
minutes later, there must have been another 10 or 12 more families
waiting for fresh pumpkins. And each family had several kids with
them. We waited for the crates to be taken off of the truck, and
picked out fresher and nicer pumpkins. It was almost like a last
minute Christmas sale, but people were much more pleasant.

It was just a strange site.

Anyway, we’ve always had this rule that if you can’t pick up your
pumpkin, it’s too big. We found out son #3 can lift 30 pounds! So,
after getting just less than 100 pounds of pumpkins ($7.99 with
tax) we decided to stop at the grocery store’s deli and get an ice-
cream cones, and head home. It’s now been just over 24 hours, and
I’ve been asked by son #3 no less than a dozen times, “When are we
going to carve the pumpkins dad?”

“Before Halloween” is all I’ve come up with so far.

And... Enjoy today’s Jokes!
Marty