The Other Bailey's Circus: Our Halloween themed weekend of Fun!

Owen and I decided that this weekend we were gonna have as much fun with the kids as humanly possible! So we planned to go to Halloween themed activities. There were a couple to choose from this weekend. There was the pumpkin patch at Schiller Farms, and Zoo Boo at the Point Defiance Zoo. Owen and I couldn't decide which one we wanted to do the most.... so we did both! This post is gonna be about the Pumpkin Patch.

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On Saturday we went to the Schiller Family Farm Pumpkin Patch. The FRG for Madigan was having an outing there. There was an option to ride a bus there, but I know my kids. One of two things was gonna happen if we took the bus. Either 1. they would be done for the day long before the bus was ready to go back to post, or 2. they would still be having fun when it was time for the bus to head back. Neither seemed like a great option. So we drove. It wasnt far. Just a little under a 30 minute drive to the outskirts of Olympia. The farm was awesome. They had several places you could go to pick your pumpkin, plus tons of other activities.

First on our stop was the petting zoo. I would just like to say that I never have understood why they are called petting zoos. None of these animals would be found in a regular zoo. They are farm animals. Shouldnt it be a petting farm? Oh well. Whatever. On to fun with kids.

This is probably the worst focus on a picture I have ever posted here.... but look at Mikaela's face! The black sheep in the background had just sniffed her face as it was walking past to the food. Mikaela got all excited, cause as far as she was concerned, the sheep had just kissed her.

Then Aeddon pet, and then kissed a pig. The picture of him kissing the pig just looks like he is sticking his butt out at the camera. Owen was taking the pictures at this point. Enough said.

Alexander was very excited about the whole thing... although he moved from one animal to the next so quickly that we never got a good picture with any of them. Oh well. Maybe next year.

Then it was on to the first pumpkin patch area. These pumpkins are close to the activities so that if you dont want to walk all the way out to the actual field.... you dont have to.

We posed everyone in the scarecrow cut out....

Mikaela

Aeddon

Alexander

Owen

And last but not least:

Me.

Then we went to take the posed "kid trying to lift a big pumpkin" pictures that my mom wanted. She is a scrapbooker and wanted essentially the same picture of each kid.

Not to bad for unedited! My favorite part is the bird poop on the pumpkin. I am trying to decide if I should edit that out or not.... After all it is for my mom.

Then we decided to go on a haybale ride.

This is the driver. Not to bad looking.... he was a serious flirt.

These are pictures taken on the haybale ride. They are just misc pics I took for Owen's first seargent. Why is it that Owen feels the need to inform his chain of command that I would LOVE to be the group photographer? Oh well. At least that way if people ask me why I took their picture, I can give them a good excuse.

Random people having fun picking their pumpkins by the cart full. Some people bought over 100lbs of pumpkin! Sheesh!

This is the entrance to the corn maze. We did not go in the corn maze. I didnt see it going well if Aeddon started panicking that we were lost. So I just took a picture of it... They also had a haybale maze in the barn... we didnt go in that either. Again, Aeddon having a panic attack was the logic in skipping that one too.

The other Haybale ride doing its thing.

Owen was determined that there would be pictures of me at the pumpkin patch... so he took this picture of me on the haybale ride. I handed him my camera when Mikaela wanted to sit on my lap instead of his. She kept trying to climb off the moving ride. He took one other picture of me on the ride. I am playing with Mikaela. Do you wanna see it? Fine. I will show you.

Nice. He loves pictures of me like this. Thanks honey.

After the haybale ride the kids wanted to play in the kids play area. That place was a total rip off if you ask me. I think that the only reason that they charged for it was because they had this neat little water toy in there and they charged for the area to cover the cost of the water... but I could be wrong. It was $3 a kid. There was a fort/slide made of haybales, the watertoy thing and a small track with two little John Deere bike/tractor things. That was it. But hey if it made the kids happy....

Aeddon loved the slide the best. I thought it was really steep. So steep that when Mikaela went randomly flying down it on her belly, Owen couldnt catch her in time before she landed at the bottom..... on her face.

She had mud on her face for the rest of the day after that. She didnt want it wiped off. Her face must have really hurt.

Alexander liked the watertoy the best.

The idea behind the toy is that you put a rubber ducky on the shoot/pipe thing then pump the waterpump until the water sends the ducky swimming down the pipe thing into the water trough on the other side. Alexander sent duckys swimming for almost 45 minutes!

Aeddon gave it a try too....

Without Owen's help.... he just couldnt get it to work right. Eventually he had a melt down cause he couldnt do it right. So we quickly left the area.... but not before getting a really cute picture of Mikaela on the mini tractor bike thing!

We loaded the kids up in a wheelbarrel (barrow?) and went off in search of the perfect pumpkin.

Aeddon wanted one he could roll:

Mikaela wanted a white one:

Alexander just wanted to take them all home.

In the end we took home one big orange one for Owen to carve, One Lumina (white one) for me to carve, and three small ones for each of the kids. We will probably carve theirs for them.... or have them paint them. not sure which.

Alexander decided that he wanted to make the haybale ride run over a pumpkin.... so he picked one that was already rotting and put it in the path....

Then he and Aeddon inspected the damage....

Then Owen decided to make people think he was crazy

He very dramatically dropped to his knees, touched the smashed pumpkin, then threw his face to the heavens and in a very dramatic voice cried out "Why God? WHY!!!!!!!"

I almost peed myself laughing. No really. I had to go pee so bad, laughing was not helping! Isn't it way to early for the baby to be affecting my bladder?

Then we found a catapillar: