Gracie and I had a day full of adventures scheduled for last Saturday.  She had a soccer game and her American Girl book club.  In between, we planned to go downtown to the Belmont Arts & Cultural Center for their Glass Pumpkin Patch.  I saw this event advertised last year, but for some reason that I now can’t remember, we didn’t make it.  When I saw it in the paper last month, I immediately put it on our calendar for this year. 

When I was a little girl, we used to take day trips to Jamestown and when we were there, we always visited the Jamestown Glasshouse.  It always mesmerized me to see the artisans turn molten glass into beautiful works of art.  So, the idea of taking the girls to see an entire “patch” of glass-blown pumpkins sounded great.   When I realized there were going to be glass blowing demonstrations, too, I was hooked. 

We ran into a scheduling glitch because the event ran from ten a.m. to two p.m.  Gracie’s soccer game was at 10:20 which meant we couldn’t go before soccer and Abigail’s soccer game was at noon which meant we wouldn’t be able to go after soccer and still be back by two for book club.  Luckily, Steve was off on Saturday  so we decided that he would stay and watch Abigail’s game and let Gracie & I go to the pumpkin patch (I didn’t feel too bad about this – I think Abigail was a little young to truly enjoy the glass blowing anyway; I did feel bad about having to miss her soccer game, though).  As it turned out, Abigail was sick, sick, sick on Saturday so Steve went to watch Gracie play and then we he brought her home, she & I headed downtown.

By the time we got there, all 700 of the glass blown pumpkins were already sold!  Wow!  I was a little disappointed and so was Gracie, but what great news for the fundraiser for the center.  And, we quickly forgot our disappointment as we watched the glass blowers.  It was as incredible as I remember from all those years ago.  Gracie’s eye were huge as she watch them.  After we watched for a while, we started to head out of the studio and we spied these beautiful glass ball ornaments.  Gracie saw the orange one and said, “Hey, Mama!  Look!  There’s still one pumpkin left!”  I don’t think it was intended as pumpkin, simply an orange ball, but it worked for both of us.  She was a happy camper and I was glad to have a piece of local art. 

Next year, we’re going to go back, but we’re going to get there early!