On a recent trip to KC, I went with the kids to
Carolyn's Pumpkin Patch. I'll have to say, what a clever way for a farmer to earn a little extra cash - paint a few signs with face holes, lay out some hay bales in a maze, put the smaller barnyard animals in a pen, and you're open for business. (That's me looking out the Chief's player.)
After you pay the entrance fee, they give you a little baggie of grain to feed the animals. Violet and Lincoln watched their dad, and then tried it on their own.
Violet didn't really like having her hand licked, but at least she let the animals eat out of her hand. Lincoln just threw the grain into the pen.
Our admission also included a token to ride the carousel. This picture is a little blurry, because I'm on the horse in front of Lincoln (what was I thinking???).
One of the cleverest activities was this giant "beach" made out of corn. They had beach chairs, shovels, and buckets, but it wasn't wet enough to make a "corn" castle. Violet spent most of her time filling the yellow bucket and watching it drain into the orange bucket through a hole in the bottom.
There were lots of photo ops at the pumpkin patch, but not necessarily willing participants. Technically Violet is in this picture, but she's hunkered down behind Jamie and Melissa (I think she'd reached her "say cheese" limit).
I managed to snap a photo when Janet climbed up on the giant rocker. They both look like shrunken characters from an
Alice in Wonderland story.
The rest of the family had to work when we went to the pumpkin patch, but we were able to have dinner together at Old Chicago pizza. I think this is the first picture in a long time that I've taken of Michael where he's not wearing Royals' blue.
And of course, no visit would be complete without some robot time with Violet. Here I was worried that she might struggle to keep this Barbie Segway balanced, but she figured out how to drive it in about 2 minutes (I'm still learning). Maybe I'm going to have to start taking lessons from her.
