Thomas Mikel Hunter

We are excited to announce Thomas Mikel Hunter as the newest member of our family. He was born at 8:10pm on October 15, 2012. He weighed in at 7lb. 5oz and was 19 inches long. I was induced exactly a week early because I delivered Gordon so quickly last time, we didn’t want to take the chance of having Thomas in a car this time!

Because I was so early (I usually deliver right at 40 weeks if not over, so a week early was almost too early for my body), it ended up taking quite a while for contractions to start even with pitocin. Once they started though, my body was able to progress. The doctor broke my water at 6pm and Thomas was born two hours later.

We are already in love with this little boy. He has blonde hair, which is new for our babies, usually they are darker hair to begin with and then turn blonde, but his hair is also a little wavy, so we can’t wait to see what happens in the future. We’re curious to see if he looks like his brothers or if our caboose is going to be different in looks from the rest of the kids.

The Pumpkin Patch

A week and a half ago, we decided that since we didn't know for sure when Thomas would be coming, we should make a trip to an apple orchard. We've found that there aren't very many apple orchards around and many of them don't have any apples left after August because of the drought this summer and the late frost in the spring, or something like that. We asked around and EVERYONE said that the best place to go is to Huber's winery and orchards.

When we got to the orchard, we found out that the u-pick prices and the already picked prices for apples was the same, so it wasn't really worth going to the apple orchard to pick, but the pumpkin patch was open and ready for visitors, so we decided we may as well visit there and just buy our apples at the store they had there. They also made apple cinnamon doughnuts and pumpkin spice doughnuts that we just HAD to try. They were so yummy, nice and warm and fabulous! They had pumpkin ice cream, but it was crazy expensive, so we decided to spend our money elsewhere and make our own pumpkin milk shakes at home later!

 

The stems of the pumpkins were HUGE. I don't know that I've ever seen stems so large on pumpkins in Oregon. Maybe because we've always gone later in the season or something, but I was impressed!

 

The pumpkins went on and on. The vines and plants were so high that I  had to watch for Gordon to make sure I didn't lose him!

 

Another difference that we have never experienced at a pumpkin patch was that Kyle had to actually cut the pumpkins off of the vines and since they were so thick, you had to use a knife. Thank goodness for Kyle's Leatherman!

Eddie was so proud of his pumpkin. I told the kids they had to be able to carry their pumpkins because Kyle couldn't carry all of them and I couldn't carry really heavy ones, but I ended up helping Eddie after all because Gordon couldn't carry his either. Celeste was the only one who actually followed the rules, so hers is the smallest. 

The other fun thing we were able to do was go to the play land they have. They had tractor rides and a corn maze along with animals to pet and a race track for pedal tractors. The kids enjoyed the late morning just playing and having fun with all of the activities.