55 Pounds of Pumpkin Later

It has been an icky week, just very tiring and emotional all-around. Today I was determined to have a great day with both boys (Matt has no school on most Fridays), but I awoke with a headache, proceeded to be overly sensitive to Barrett this morning, and was grouchy before I'd even had a shower. But...Thank God for the pumpkin patch! 

55 pounds of pumpkins later there were 2 happy and exhausted muddy boys and one happy and exhausted muddy mother. We went to Lone Pine Farms in Junction City, and if you are from around here, I highly recommend it. Barrett found it online at http://www.lonepinefarms.com/. We were sad that he didn't get to go, but the forecast says rain all weekend, and none today. There were goats to pet and feed, a large playground, a store with ice cream and food as well as produce, a "cow train" small roller-coaster ride and the choice of a tractor drawn or horse drawn trip to the pumpkin patch (HUGE one) to choose pumpkins (priced by the pound), and a corn maze. It was a great place to go. We literally could have spent all day there, and as it was were there for about 3 1/2-4 hours. It did cost us about $45 for all we did, but I wanted to check everything out...and we did buy pretty good-sized pumpkins, so you could definitely do it for less (or also for more, as the $7 Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches smelled delicious!!).

The maze was long, and we spent over an hour in it, reading Halloween trivia clues off of a laminated card out loud that would tell you which way to go...if you guessed the right answer. We even cheated and looked a few up on my phone! The maze is haunted at night, but it gave it the right amount of spooky during the day to see most of the props set up, like a ghost town, deserted school bus and creepy gingerbread house area that we walked through to name a few. One fun aspect was the clues...you would have to find numbered posts, and then solve the trivia and it would say which way to turn. There were also fun-house mirrors throughout that really gave weird illusions of which path you had come from. I hate scary stuff, so walking through the maze with just the two boys on a cloudy, windy day was really fun. I doubt we'd like the actual haunted maze. About half-way through we all wanted to give up, then saw a sign (and an emergency exit) saying we were at the half-way point. We decided to keep going, gave fist-pumps and went on our muddy way. 


Lunch today? Tillamook ice cream cones. We got three pumpkins at the actual patch, and now that we are home, we all changed into "soft clothes" and I put the muddy clothes in the washer. The boys are watching Ice Age Dawn of the Dinosaurs, while I attempt to make P.F. Chang's Lettuce Wraps with jasmine rice for dinner. Surprisingly, the trip with my boys gave me the energy to do so, and put a huge smile on my face. Thank you, God, this was just what I needed.