Pumpkin Patch 09

It's going to take me an entire week just to blog about this past weekend. The kids and I went up to my parents' for a few days to visit and go to the State Fair of Texas, while Brandon was on a ministers' retreat in Colorado Springs. Colorado may have beautiful mountains and clean, crisp air, but do they have fried butter? I didn't think so.

Saturday morning started off at the local pumpkin patch. A trip to the pumpkin patch always sounds like a good idea at first. Pumpkins. Inflatable slides. 30 year old playground equipment. Hayrides. What could be better? Throw in Saturday-in-October crowds, mud, lots of morning dew, and some mommies and grandparents BOUND AND DETERMINED to get a great picture of 4 small children, and the idea starts to go downhill fast.

After (briefly) losing Aidan in the hay maze, and eventually sending Dane into rescue him after he had fallen and muddied his jeans, we managed to get a few pics of the cousins.

Some of them turned out pretty good, all things considering.

Others featured a very awkward Aidan who DOES NOT like to pose for pictures.

Dane struck a pose...

Harper met some pumpkins...

(I'm going to pause for a moment to contemplate the cuteness of her Halloween tights.)

And the boys finally got to play for a little while.

I think I played on a merry-go-round just like this one when I was in third grade. I think enough small children got sucked underneath the maniacal spinning merry-go-round that they stopped putting these on elementary school playgrounds. But that hasn't stopped the pumpkin patch people.

We got to the pumpkin patch 5 minutes after they opened, and left after an hour and it was packed. We got there at just the right time, and were definitely ready to leave after about an hour.

It was only the beginning of a very fun weekend, packed with family, some shopping, and lots of pictures.