The Pumpkin Patch

It's become an annual tradition for our family to go to the pumpkin patch near my mothers' house with them every fall to let Audrey pick out pumpkins. This pumpkin patch is seriously great! It's on an old man's farm where he grows and ships in TONS of pumpkins (he gets thousands of people each week), meets everyone at the front of the house, drives them out into the fields on his tractor and you get about 15-20 minutes to search all of his fields to find the perfect pumpkin. Once you find it, you write your name on it, load it in the back cart behind the tractor and ride back to his barn. He then dumps them all into a huge trough and you get to find yours, scrub it down and take it home.

It really is a lot of fun. He has been doing it for years and years and promises he will do it until the day he passes. And his son says that he'll pick it up from there. It's a great place to take the whole family. So, after we woke up this morning after the wedding last night and I delivered wedding photos, we set out to go with the grannies. Audrey was so excited! She just kept chanting "I want a pumpkin!" over and over and over. She wore herself out running around talking about pumpkins so much that once she was in her car seat, she fell asleep.

We arrived, and it was oddly quiet there, so he rounds us up everyone and tells us that he ran out of pumpkins and his pumpkin truck, which was supposed to be there at 4am wasn't going to be there until 4pm. Oh, no! Audrey was so excited that I couldn't let her go without finding pumpkins, so I told my mothers to find a Methodist church in the area since they always throw pumpkin patches in the fall. Sure enough, in the next town over there was a church having a pumpkin patch. Audrey slept through the initial stop and didn't wake up until we got to the church. Her first word when she woke up, half asleep, was "pumpkin?"

When we got there she first saw the pumpkins and screeched for joy. But, it didn't take her long to find the inflatable Elmo there. She ran over to say "Hi" and hug him and was thrilled that he was at the pumpkin patch with her. Every pumpkin she picked out had to be shown to Elmo before we could decide whether to get it or not.

Here she is hugging Elmo.

We had to take family photos with Elmo. My poor husband forgot his sunglasses and spent most of the time looking like this.

And the three of us. I look ginormous, but it's for the sake of posterity. Some day when I'm 90+ and saggy and wrinkly, I'll look back on this time when I was 5 months pregnant, swollen, tired and holding my beautiful toddler and think "Dang, I looked good!" At least, if I'm not senile I might.

Deciding which pumpkin to choose.

The look of determination. This was her first pumpkin decision. Yes, she was bringing it to show Elmo.

And picking one for Tony. They each ended up with two teeny tiny ones.

When we got home, I asked her to help me show off and arrange the pumpkins. I asked her to show me Tony's pumpkin. She brought it to me, sat it on my lap, and took off to go play.

Here's our little family's pumpkins. The white one is mine coz I wanted something different. They had a bunch of green, red and mixed pumpkins, but they were all damaged and I didn't want it to rot before fall was over. Around here, I leave pumpkins up until it's time to decorate for Christmas. :) The big orange one is my husband's. And the four little ones belong equally to Audrey and Tony.

Although it wasn't our initial plan for the pumpkin patch, I'd say it was a huge success. Audrey took one of her little ones in the car with her on the two hour trek across the state from grannies house to our house and sang in the back until she fell asleep "I love you, pumpkin." It was adorable.

Does anyone else make pumpkin patch trips a regular part of their fall?