The Pumpkin Patch

I am so behind on everything.  Scott and I have been spending a lot of our free time fixing up little things in the house and there is still so much to do.  Scott is out of town for a couple weeks for Air Force Reserve duty and this past week has just felt so crazy.  It was Emma's birthday, the two younger boys had teacher conferences, we've had workers in the house working on the basement and the kitchen, plus all the regular activities and homework and chores and things.  I feel like I have no time.  So I am really behind on things I want to put on the blog.  Here is a trip we took a few weeks ago to the pumpkin patch.  This was at a cattle ranch in North Salt Lake.  We had a great time.  First we took a wagon ride out to see the cows.  It was cool to see them close up.  Emma was worried the wagon ride would be too fast.

John was concerned about which side the cows would be on.  This is a frequent concern of his about stores or other points of interest.  In this case the cows were on both sides so all was well.  Grant thought the cows were too smelly and plugged his nose the whole time.  :). I guess I don't get that close to cows too often.   They were so big!!

Checking out some other animals.

Next stop the corn maze.

Scott, John, Emma and I tackled the small corn maze which was still very challenging and took us a while to get through.

There were little stations to find in the maze with rubbings to collect on a card.

The kids got a little candy as a prize for getting all the stations.

Grant, Matthew and Anna tackled the big maze.  Somehow Grant got more stations in there than the other two.  I made Matthew and Anna promise they would not leave Grant behind but apparently they all survived.  Scott went in to find them after we finished and they were all ready to get out of the maze at that point.

John as a witch

A big inflatable to jump on.  One thing I liked about this pumpkin patch is that it wasn't that crowded!!

Emma as Thor

There were some fun slides

The kids were able to go together sometimes

Emma was scared at first but was going down on her own by the end

Thor and I forget her name...is it Black Widow?

Scott wanted to pass on the pumpkin patch and just pick some up at the store and I should have listened to him, but I couldn't resist the siren song of a REAL pumpkin patch (vs. a bunch of cut pumpkins placed in a field).  We found some good ones but they weren't that big and Emma kept abandoning hers to find one that looked like Anna's.  So, that was difficult.

I think I had to talk her through it at the end...she was getting tired.

Emma as a bat

Can you read the fatigue on her face?

At the end we got some fancy caramel apples and cider donuts.  They were all so tasty!!

I didn't bring in my purse thinking I wouldn't need it and it would just weigh me down but by the end I was carrying every kid's coat, half eaten lollipops, used stickers that some child really wanted to save, parts of caramel apples, water bottles the kids got at the end of the maze (and each kid insisted that I remember which water bottle belonged to whom) and etc.  I wasn't feeling very generous about holding more stuff by the end.  We also had a wagon full of pumpkins.  I need to carry a light weight bag of some kind with me on these outings.

 We were at the pumpkin patch for several hours and we all survived.  It was fun to do a family activity (other than house fixer upper projects).  Happy Fall!!