It's fall here! I've been dying to do some fall things, but every weekend we have something going on, and we've been waiting for our friends Adam and Carolyn to come visit. It turns out they can't make it this year for our annual fall weekend, so we took the kids today. I called my parents and knew my mom would want to come. I was surprised when we got there and my dad was getting ready too.
We went to Abbott's Farm, which is literally about 2 miles away from us. We used to drive all the way out to LaFayette to Beak and Skiff, but Abbott's is closer and better! We could have easily spent the entire day there, but Cole was tired and needed his nap. We were there for almost 3 hours though!
We started off with some apple cider, pressed right there. I know we could have watched the process, but my sleepy guy was well, sleepy before we got to it. Included in our price was some animal food, so we fed the goats and sheep. We said hello to the chickens, turkeys and bunnies. Cole loved to browse the animals, but refused to touch them or feed them. Nicolette was a little more daring and actually fed them. Crazy- I totally thought they'd be the opposite!
After that we took the hayride out to the corn maze. I have to tell you, I don't know if I was deprived as a child or what, but I was really looking forward to this. Something about trying to find your way out of a giant maze sounds so fun, and let me tell you, if you had a good couple of hours, it would have been. Except, I didn't have a couple of hours, instead I had a little boy who wanted to run in damp mud, and little girl who didn't quite get the concept. We thought we we so good at the maze, making it to this bridge with a kid sitting there. Little did we know that we had just found the start of the maze. That should have been a sign.
So we tried it on our own for .2 seconds, then my mom opened the stapled paper of clues and a map. That didn't even help us. We were so over the maze so tried to backtrack our steps to make it back to the beginning. From there, we left, and it felt so good. Who knew a corn maze could make you feel crazy. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.
From the corn maze we went to the pumpking patch. We didn't pick any pumpkins there though because there is a pumpkin patch that sells them for $1 each. The kids had fun sitting on the pumpkins until the tractor came back to get us.
Next on the agenda was apple picking. I spent most of this time trying to get my (almost) 2 year old to go pick apples. He was just being defiant, not sure why. Ummmm, not fun. Once I got him to where the family was, he was fine, happy eating his apple. Ugh. Little boys. He's not 3 yet, so why is he starting the "terrible 3's" already? Yes, I know the saying is terrible twos, but three is much more challenging, in our experience.
We picked empire and two other kinds. I wasn't there long enough to know... haha! We got plenty of apples to make pie, apple crisp and eat. We'll need to get more apples to make apple butter and applesauce. Doing all that picking made us hungry for some lunch. The line was pretty long, so my mom and I took the kids to get their face painted. We ended up with two blue nosed kitties. So cute!
After lunch was some bouncy house time.
We wanted to do the giant slide, but there just wasn't enough time. Next time!
The last thing we did was buy two little pumpkins for the kids.
They got to pick their own out. I wondered what pumpkin qualities they were looking for. The both picked out nice ones though. After Nicolette picked her pumpkin out, she asked me to carry her. Jon and my mom were ahead of me and my dad was behind me. I assumed he had cole so I went inside with Nicolette, Jon and my mom. A minute later, I saw my dad inside, but no Cole. I asked him if he had Cole and he said no. At first I didn't believe him- who had Cole if he didn't? It clicked that he was serious and I darted outside to find him. I scanned the area where we were and didn't see him. Then I saw the little bridge and there he was, just looking around, playing. I ran to him, acting all normal, like I didn't just lose my own kid. Thank goodness.
I've never been in a panic quite like that before and I was surprised how I reacted. I totally expected to freak out, but I was surprisingly calm, yet paniced, if that makes sense. All sorts of things were going through my head though. What if someone took him, what if he was hurt, what if he was scared...
We called it a day when Cole refused to come with us and threw his little pumpkin into the little pond. He had quite the audience, including one of my students. Classy, I know.
Apple pie baking to come. And chili. I'm looking forward to the smells that will fill my house tomorrow!
