Monday, October 27, 2014

Fall-y Things

We went to a down homey pumpkin patch this year and had a laughing great time! This guy greated us. 
 And of course Olivia LOVED him and held him most of the time there. She's been asking for a kitten for years. When we ask her questions like, what do you want to do? She answers "get a cat".
So this was a cute guy I got to hold. Let me back up. The woman who owned the farm said, "If you can catch it, you can hold it." Then she says, "Watch this! This'll be great!" She closes that back barn door you see and lets out ALL her goats at the same time (like 20).  Stampede. And the black one behind me was a HOOT! She called him "dumb goat". She had just gotten him 2wks before from someone who said he was "really nice". All the other goats left the barn to go to the pen, except the very tall one behind me. His head was pushing up my armpit and he kept bleating super funny sounding and biting my clothes. I kept moving away, but he kept following me. He was more like a donkey in stubbornness, but then got "forced" back into the stall for a "time out". 
The woman had 3 sons who worked with her. This boy in the yellow shirt was one of them and was our special "tour guide" for the day.
The boy Isaac is talking to is her other son. It was his job (and Isaac joined him) to get the goats who escaped to the corn field back into their rightful fence.
The woman told us the goats hadn't eaten yet and would be super hungry. We fed them from ice cream cones. They look all calm from the other side of the fence. However, when the boy took us to the goats, he opened the fence for us to follow him in and feed them. Because he had a big bucket of food, all the goats trampled him to get to it and he got knocked down. He was totally fine, but with all of us in there too we were getting shoved around to pieces and Elias quickly fussed to be picked up. We thought it safest to feed them from outside the fence. It was quite hilarious though!
Ahhhh....much better.
Walking with Dad.
I just found this so funny that the goats were jumping the fence to go eat in the corn field. First is was just one, and then another and another, and another.... 
Then the boy led us out to no man's land to see the horses and ponies. This is the very overgrown stuff we had to walk through. The animals ran away from us when we got close. They weren't the "riding" ones.
This was a bunny and chicken hutch.
Might as well get in the hutch.....
And here is the oldest son in charge of horse rides.
When we looked through these pictures later, Elias said he had a sad face because he wanted to ride with mommy on it. Justin got to walk beside him instead.
Lo and behold, the pumpkin patch. This size came free with entry fee (very well priced). When we left, the cat got in the van with us. Although Olivia would have loved to bring him home, we drove him to the barn and left. Fun times!
Olivia's American Heritage Girl troop had a bonfire night. Issac is in the orange hat on the mound of dirt.
It was a fruit farm and had a cool barn/shed for serving food.
Olivia and I took the hayride together. Isaac had taken the one before with a friend he met while there. (Yes, we had a talk about not telling me he was going on a hayride w/o us.)
We were out far enough to see the beautiful sky filled with stars. I threw Isaac on top of the van to watch them.  Olivia wouldn't get on no matter how hard I tried to convince her.
Getting ready for carving the $1.99 pumpkins I found at aldi!
What a strong boy!
My Grandaddy and Judy came over for dinner and carve time. It was really special have them over. Thanks for coming!
We all got a kick out of some of Elias's reactions.
We have a ginko tree. Actually two. That species is the oldest known tree on earth.
Isaac is ready to shoot at anytime with anything.
The final products. They each designed their own.
Olivia lost another tooth and now looks even more like her pumpkin head!

More Fall-y Things!

We took a family hike in the mountains. This was traveling to the trailhead from info center. 
 Sweetness.
 Isaac kept picking up sticks. This is the one that Elias wanted to pick up. 
 Monkey? or Isaac?
 Rock climbing.
 That's one way to get in a picture.
 Rock throwing.
 Building bird house.
 We still have to paint and hang.
 Sleeping with his head out the door.
 I just think he's so cute!
 Olivia took a cake decorating class at school during fall break.  We made some more and practiced at Grandma's house.
 I love that he hangs on to my hair no matter what I'm doing...even putting away laundry.
 This is not halloween practice. This is Olivia after she spontaneously pulled out one of her teeth.
 Olivia realized she could carve faces into mushrooms before cutting them up. It made it more fun to cut them! My little cook!
 He found this suit when pulling out the next size of clothes.
 He flew all through the house.
 Cooked "bricks we made after reading about Moses and Pharaoh. The broken up pieces was the brick "without straw". (It was really just mud and weeds. Very messy, but very fun.)
 Foothills Fall Festival.
 It was super fun and all free. Too bad this was the last annual festival.
 This squirrel was driving the boat around the pool. Olivia, Elias, and I got to pet it after the show.


 Isaac waited forever in line for this, but it was totally worth it! We'll have to go for real laser tagging!
 No fear! 
 This was the awesomest pig race! I felt like I was in the movie Sweet Home Alabama during the "country" part. The man in charge could have made the crowd excited enough to eat worms!
 Olivia is back there in the middle somewhere with a pink shirt on.
 He likes these things.
I was going to go the the Tim McGraw concert and sit outside to listen, but then a friend called with an extra ticket because her husband was sick! Boo and Yeah all at once!
 That's about as clear as I could get from where I was at.
 Found them together one night.
And my last picture.....what happens when you try to be quiet during nap time. Another great cooking show missed! Darn! I was trying to be on the ball with snack time after school. I was making avocado chocolate pudding. It was all accidental, but the gist is I had the lid off and a piece of blender shot out and the pudding splatted ALL over the bathroom. Of course, the picture doesn't do it justice. (I may or may not have had a spoon in the blender.) So instead of being prepared, I spent most of nap time cleaning this good intention up. And by the way, the little bit I salvaged was not as good as I had hoped, and it was frowned hugely upon by the kids.
Olivia found me a $3 blender at a garage sale that will tide me over till Christmas! :-)  
*Check out "older posts" for Ohio travels with the kids.