Pumpkins and a Photo Shoot

We had some lovely late fall days in October complete with sunshine, warm temperatures, and colorful leaves.  Madison, Emily and Abigail were lucky enough to have a random Thursday off from school on one of those perfect days.  Instead of wasting the day and sleeping in and then laying around the house we went out and visited the Gartenschau, a botanical garden in Kaiserslautern.

Madison was being a little goofy, but she was ready to get moving through the gardens.  Every fall the Gartenschau has a pumpkin festival.  There is a contest for the largest pumpkin and there are sculptures built from pumpkins.  This year the sculptures had an aquatic theme.  

 These are the first place and second place pumpkins.  They certainly were big, but they sure weren't pretty.

There were tons of pumpkin sculptures, but everyone had a favorite.  Emily's was this clown fish because she loves the movie Finding Nemo.

 Madison liked this enormous octopus,

and Abigail's favorite was this killer whale.

After we had walked through all the pumpkin marine animals the girls spent some time just playing.  Besides the botanical gardens, the Gartenschau has different playgrounds and lots of spaces to just sit and relax.  Guess what I did while they played?

I couldn't believe that Emily and Madison were actually playing on a playground.  Abigial, sure, but the two older girls?  It helped that this particular playground was super cool with gears and levers to manipulate to make the water from a nearby stream flow through the playground's features.

Abigail spent a lot of time swinging around in this baskety, swing-like thing while Madison and Emily reclined on these not-as-comfortable-as-they-look lounge chairs.

Eventually, Emily and Abigail went off to explore and Madison and I spent some time together lounging around and talking.  When they left, I sent the camera with Abigail because it is her camera after all and I was too lazy to follow after them and take pictures of whatever adventures they found.  It's always fun for me to go through the pictures when I get the camera back and see the world from the eyes of my kids.  On this day, Emily and Abigail seemed to be interested in doing some sort of photo shoot.  I am pretty certain that it was all Emily's idea because it's just such an Emily thing to do.

So here's Abigail looking cute as can be and having a great time by the stream, next to a wall, sitting on a fountain, and on a lovely bench.

And Emily looking pretty as well.  That third picture is so serious - she's not looking at the camera or smiling!

I was glad that after almost four years here I finally made it to the Gartenschau.  All of the girls had been before, but I never tagged along.  The girls were glad that we saw slushies being sold on the way out so we could all get a sweet, cold treat.