The Pumpkin Patch

At the end of a typically busy (read: absurdly busy) weekend that included Chucky Cheese birthday parties, mountain biking, golf practice with Bryce, Halloween parties, and staying out too late watching a band, we decided to take the last hours of daylight and go to pick pumpkins. whew...

It was an absolutely perfect day, and I am glad we did go out into it. It's so easy to sit around on Sunday and watch football all day or watch and wish for the Tampa Bay Rays to do well in the World Series.

We went over to the Grand Ole' Pumpkin patch which had all the good stuff for kids like hay rides, enormous inflatable slides (which I think Brenna enjoyed as much as the kids), a hay bail maze and loads of kids. We had a blast, and the kids ran practically non stop the entire time...except when in the back of the tractor where they just wiggled a lot.

When we got out into the pumpkin patch to pick a couple of aspiring jack-o-lanterns Aiden wandered everywhere and Ansley went around trying to find a tiny pumpkin for him. The smallest one weighed half as much as he did, so she wasn't too successful.

Ah, brothers...

Yep, she's acting cute here...I am in such trouble when she's 16...

Aiden and Mom had a good time in the hay bails, and all the kids were picking hay out of their shirts and hair for the next hour.

Aiden was really good at putting hay in the other kids' hair just in case they didn't get enough when they were jumping around in it.

In the end we did get some good pumpkins and I will get a few photos of the jack-o-lanterns that will be carved sometime this week.

And as we were leaving, Bryce and Ansley saw the helicopter rides. There eyes were as big as saucers when I said that we could go down close to the landing area. In the past they have been scared and timid around big noisy things like that, but this time, much to my wallets chagrin, they weren't. They bounced around and were absolutely amazed by the machine. I ended up ponying up the money to take them for a ride.

At one point I thought back to my old hobbies and realized that this was one of the only times I had ever actually landed in the helicopter that I took off in...

Hit the little gray arrow button in the bottom left below to see the video...