Pumpkin Patch

We went to Summer's Pumpkin Patch today. The girls had a BLAST!!!

Pictures are here.















Things I learned:

• We don't like the corn maze at Summer's farm. If we want to do a corn maze in the future, it's worth the money to go to Crumland Farm where we actually have a chance of completing the maze correctly and relatively quickly. The Summer's one they give you a list of clues but there are numerous turns that do NOT have a clue telling you where to go. We never found clue #3 (even when he'd warned me that one was "hard" and told me it's general location) and finally stumbled back on the correct path at clue #8, and even then it took some "self-made short cuts" to get to the end). I would guess the only way the girls will even consider a corn maze next year is if I assure them that the Crumland one is different, they were not impressed with this one LOL.
• The fact that they're open during the week when it's not very busy is AWESOME! No waiting in line for the slides, pumkin pillow, etc.
• Four year olds, no matter how many times they're reminded, do NOT fully comprehend the concept of "choose a pumkin YOU can carry".
• When I have no other option, I'm capable of carrying 3 large-ish (8-9 lbs each) pumpkins at once.
• Apparently I looked quite awkward doing so, people were literally "jumping" to help me. But honestly, I had them. And the girls felt quite proud of themselves when I gave L the "job" of carrying my keys and pushing the unlock button when we got to the car and A the "job" of opening the back hatch of the minivan (which I knew she could do, otherwise I would have had her open a sliding door and set them down there).

So, yes, the girls had great fun, picked their own pumpkins out. We're now going to try a "pumpkin rolling" game with them, probably tomorrow, and then we'll try carving them into jack-o-lanterns. It occurs to me that I'm not sure *I* have ever carved a pumpkin, I'm thinking the last time I was involved in the pumpkin carving process I was still a young enough kid that I drew the face & mom or dad cut it out, so we shall see how it goes . . . Thanks to tv and such, the girls specified the whole, put a light in the jack-o-lantern aspect of things so I can't get buy w/ just having them paint faces on their pumpkins LOL.

They didn't have "long enough" there, so I promised them that if we can figure out another day that we aren't doing other things between now and the end of the month, keeping in mind that we're going to Disney at the end of the month so sometime I have to get ready for that too, we'll go back. It was seriously EMPTY and the weather today was gorgeous so it must just always be that empty during the week. And the girls would have happily spent MUCH longer playing in the corn pit a "pit" made of hay bales and filled w/ shelled corn, so kind of a ball pit/sand box kind of thing, and on the slides, and on the moon bounce thingy, and there was a BIG sand box that they didn't even get in because of lack of time, so I think we'll definitely get our money's worth out of a second day if I can find the time. I'd say slightly more "kid stuff to do" at Summer's than at Crumland (keeping in mind that I'm comparing this to last year's Crumland, we didn't make it there this year since it's only open on weekends and I wasn't willing to go when the temps were still in the 90's) and the lack of crowds during the week is a huge draw, plus the hayride to the pumpkin patch, I think Crumland does that, or at least a hayride for the sake of a hayride, but it's an extra charge so we haven't done it. But like I said, I'm not likely to attempt the Summer's corn maze anytime soon, and based on my memory of the Crumland corn maze (from at least 2 yrs ago) it's do-able, so we may have to go back there next year for the corn maze.