On Monday, we took the kids up past the (Missouri) river to a pumpkin patch/farm near Sugar Creek. We had a lot of fun tooling around the farm, enjoying all the farm animals, the petting zoo, the children's play area, the farm trikes (which Levi and Zeke loved), and the train ride. Zeke was the most excited about the train ride! He loves trains. The train was much bigger than we expected and the passenger cars were too!
I think Pete was a little worried that I would want a FARM... he knows how much I love animals. They had several bunny pens and a large enclosure that he thought looked like a bunny village! He said, "Oh, no. That's what you'll be wanting me to build you!" There's no room here in the city... but if we had some land.....??????? Yeah, and he's the one who is always saying how he would like to have a goat or two, but I think that was back when he would rather have a goat than mow the grass. Now he has Titus to mow! It was funny listening to Zeke talk to the animals. He reminds me of ME! He told a billy goat what a nice beard he had, he asked several of the animals "How are you today?" It was so funny.
The kids went through a mini corn husk maze, which was fun... more like a path than a maze. They have a large maze in the corn field on the farm. Calling it huge is an understatement! It was not open, but Titus insisted that we go back sometime and do it. It's only open on the weekends. Unfortunately, the closes today for the season, but we may try to get up there on next year and explore the maze! The kids loved it so much that we'll probably make it a Weiss family tradition!
While we were there, we took a huge hayride out to the pumpkin patch where the kids got to pick their own pumpkins. Since we have grown pumpkins ourselves in our meager backyard garden, we all appreciated the magnitude of what we were seeing. As we approached, little orange dots speckled the ground almost as far as the eye could see. Then as we got closer, everyone got excited for the tractor to stop as we scanned the patch for the best pumpkins. It didn't take my crew too long to find what they wanted. Zeke and Levi had their arms full of pumpkins until Daddy told them that they had to choose ONE! Still, we left the farm with 8 pumpkins (one for each of us in the family).
On the way home, went down by the river's edge so the kids could see the Missouri River a little closer. There's a side road that takes you to a park area down by the water.
We're in the habit of taking a football with us practically everywhere we go, so everyone jumped out of the van for a short play time. The little boys headed for the playground and the older boys and Pete started tossing around the football. I stayed in the van to nurse the baby. Everything was going well until Pete decided to kick the football, which promptly headed toward the Missouri River! Thankfully it didn't land in the river! It landed on the bank instead. Moses took after it and ran down the hill to get the ball. I'm sure he didn't want to lose their favorite football. He quickly realized that a river bank isn't quite like running down a regular hill and tumbled into the mud! Oops! He was quite a muddy mess and took a shower as soon as we got home.
We ate our chili that was waiting in the crock pot and called it a day.
Yesterday we got to work with our pumpkins. We carved them, took out the seeds (that we're roasting today), and made some glazed pumpkin muffins. I can't believe that we've managed to turn our adventure into a three day event, but we did.
Here are some of the pumpkins we carved.
This is Levi's KC Football Pumpkin.
Shad's pumpkin that says "BABY" and has a pacifier on the side.
To the right is my maple leaf pumpkin.
The older kids carved their own pumpkins this year. That was a first.
We used a new carver that we bought and I need to go get a few more! They were fabulous.
Have a blessed day, friends and enjoy FALL!
