Pumpkin Patch

With all my complaining about the craziness of fall and how hectic it has been to have three kiddos in soccer once again, I failed to mention that during the past month+ it’s been Justin’s busy season at work.  That little tidbit of information is crucial to accurately portraying my life these past months.  Thankfully, I have superpowers and as a result we’ve emerged virtually unscathed. 

As the end of the year is approaching we realized Justin has a bunch of PTO days he needs to take since he can now only carry forward 5 days into the next year.  Basically he’ll have at least one day off each week.  Pretty sweet, huh?  Though in hindsight it would have been wiser to have him use more days after Drew was born or during the summer when we could have done some fun outdoor outings with the kids.  Oh well, I have no doubt I can keep him plenty busy at home ;)

His first day off was this past Friday.  The kids get out early from school on Fridays and with the beautiful fall weather we’ve been enjoying we thought it would be fun to take them to a pumpkin patch after school.  We wanted to sneak in a nice lunch out before we needed to pick up the kids, but Drew’s been taking such long morning naps that we ended up letting him sleep up until we had to go get Abigail.

We haven’t taken the kids to a pumpkin patch since we moved here.  I spent some time looking for a pumpkin patch nearby and had a hard time finding one that was open on weekdays, had an intricate corn maze, and didn’t cost too much.  In the end we decided to go with the pumpkin patch from years past.

2013:  with baby Drew in a carrier not pictured

2010:  with baby Katie in a carrier not pictured

2009:  with baby Katie in utero

While I quickly fed Drew in the van, Justin took the kids to the biffys and let them race rubber duckies.

I bought this little owl hat from China for $3.59 (shipping included) – I’m pretty happy that it was legit and so cute!

The reason we were willing to drive 45 minutes to a pumpkin patch was because the corn mazes at this location are awesome!  The themes are always so well carried out and it is big.  The maze this year was monster themed and is 2.2 miles if you go straight through without getting lost or turned around.  There were 12 monsters to find throughout the maze.  We totally let the kids be our guides – they actually did awesome, but we definitely logged more than the minimum 2.2 miles.

Getting our tickets

Jason at the maze entrance

With maps in hands we were ready to go!

The walls of entrance tunnel were so fun 

Do you think Justin is checking his GPS for directions? 

One of the bridges 

Trying to figure out where to go next

Hooray!  One of the 12 monsters we found!

Every so often we would run across some sort of fun monster within the maze

Katie didn’t tire at all

After the maze we collected our prizes and walked around the farm a bit before making our way back toward home.  We purchased the most delicious fudge from the gift shop – Chocolate Explosion, chocolate fudge with pecans, brownie and a caramel drizzle on top – yum, yum!