Oh I Love Me Some FALL !!

Fall is my FAVORITE season! I just love pulling out the autumn decorations and "decking the halls with boughs of pumpkins" (feel free to chime in with a fa-la-la, if you so desire)

Our weekend was da bomb! The kids were out of school last Friday for a "teacher in-service" day. (What IS that, anyway?!)

As a side note, they most certainly DIDN'T have such things when I was in school. We counted ourselves fortunate to get a day off from school during the Blizzard of '76, but I'm not bitter.

Anyway, on those occasional days off from school, I make an effort to plan a fun day for us to enjoy. This time around we headed to a GREAT pumpkin patch we had heard about and spent about 5 hours having the best time!

This wasn't just your run-o-the-mill field-o-pumpkins, friends. This was the mother lode of Fall Festivities! There was so much to do -- lots of plain, simple fun. Here's where I'll mention that I. FORGOT. MY. CAMERA. Oh, the pain! I spent the whole day thinking "that would be such a precious shot"!

One favorite stop was the underground slide that the kids went down repeatedly, paddle boats, an inflatable to jump on, hay bales to climb, a mega bin full of feed corn to romp in, a train ride, a corn maze, playgrounds, and of course, a hayride to the pumpkin patch.

I allowed each of the kids to pick out a small pumpkin -- and it was interesting to watch each of them approach that task. Natalie had hers selected in 10 seconds flat, and thought everyone else should too. Alli hunted and hunted for the perfect one. Holly kept picking up pumpkins, carrying them around, and trading them repeatedly. Evan was pretty much just happy to be trekking through the mud! Here's what they ended up with, in age order:

Holly had a Fall concert last week where she had to dress as a scarecrow. Doesn't she make a cute one? AND an effective one -- you'll notice NO crows around! It goes without saying that she had endure more than one chorus of "If I Only Had a Brain".