Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Amalia in the Pumpkin Patch

Last week on Tuesday, while her Mommy was starting her new job at Martha Stewart's Weddings Magazine in Manhattan, Amalia and her grandma, Yiayia Joanie, made cupcakes to surprise Mommy, because it was her birthday.


Amalia put all the sprinkles on the cupcakes by herself, and she cleaned up all the extra sprinkles that fell off, by eating them.


When Mommy came home from work with her friends, everyone enjoyed the cupcakes and  Mommy blew out the candles and the grown-ups drank champagne.

Then on Thursday, Amalia and her Mommy and her Papou Nick and Yiayia Joanie drove to Grafton, MA where Mommy was appearing at a book event for the Worcester Public Library.

When she got to Yiayia and Papou's house, the first thing Amalia had to do was to have tea on the porch with Yiayia's dolls, Molly and Victoria.

Then she had to feed the fish in the fishpond with Yiayia Nene.


On Friday everyone went with Amalia to the Pumpkin Patch at Tsougas Family Farm in Northboro.
The pressure was on.  How would Amalia ever be able to choose the perfect pumpkin from so many pumpkins?


She would just have to start at the beginning and look at every pumpkin.



She would take Mommy along to advise her.



Look!  There's a green one.  That's intriguingly different.



In the end, Amalia told her Mommy that she liked the baby pumpkins best, because she could carry them.


Amalia made her final decision--Here's her favorite pumpkin in the whole pumpkin patch.


Don't look now, Yiayia Joanie, but there are two creepy guys following us.


Nearby Tsougas Farm, we stopped at Davidian Brothers Farm where Yiayia Joanie chose a big pumpkin that she could carve for the house, and Yiayia Nene posed with the biggest pumpkin yet.


That night, as Yiayia Joanie carved the big pumpkin, (Amalia had requested a happy face, instead of a scary or sad face), Auntie Frosso read her a book about Halloween.


When she was asked if she'd like to touch the "gooey stuff" (she calls it "gluey stuff"), Amalia said politely, "Please, no! No thank you!"


When the pumpkin was all carved, we got out a flashlight to see what it would look like in the dark on Halloween.


Amalia decided that, after a strenuous day of making decisions, the best thing about Halloween was not picking the pumpkin, but playing with the flashlight.


2 comments:

Lauralee said...

My heart is so full right now. I can not tell you how happy I am that I came across your blog! By the suggestion of a friend of mine, I am currently reading your husbands book. Eleni. I am only on chapter four and I am so interested in all of it. I stopped just now so that I could look up some pictures from Lia, Greece and the surrounding areas. This is how I came across your blog. I am in awe. To see your family, Eleni's family. I am in awe. I look forward to reading more and more and learning more about Greece and its history. Again, my heart is full and I am in awe. Please thank your husband for writing his mothers story. It has introduced me to a wonderful woman and a history I did not know about. I can not wait until my friend comes back from visiting his family in Greece so that I can tell him about your blog!

by Joan Gage said...

Lauralee! Thank you so much for your wonderfully kind words about the blog and about Nick's book "Eleni" about his mother! I've shared your comments with him. Reading "Eleni" can often make people so sad that I always advise them to read the sequel, "A Place for Us" which tells the much happier story of Nick and his sisters coming to Worcester, MA to live with the father Nick had never known, and had trouble at first accepting.