Harvest Festival

 A couple of weeks ago the fam here went to one of the local "harvest festivals", which seem to be built up around farm stores at this time of year. We ended up with the most beautiful sunny day we had had that week. Perfect for an outdoors outing.

Naturally, we had to take lots of pictures (well, some did, I dutifully brought my camera and took pictures with other people's cameras instead). I was supposed to be in the hole in this one, but it is difficult to both be in the picture and be taking it. Poor Seraya didn't make it into any of these.

After hanging around taking pictures, playing games and looking for Mel's lost necklace (it was her mom's so rather important and they did find it in the end) we went on a hay ride. Of course, we also had to go through the corn maze. It was a little well used and some unofficial short cuts had definitely been made, but it was a fun walk through. I had the stroller so Seraya and I didn't take a lot of unorthodox shortcuts. The biggest problem was making sure the two "big" girls didn't run of down someplace we couldn't see them.

But we made it through and found all of our key landmarks, including the hay bale ziggurat  in the middle. I think both Vienna and Ziva were feeling a little nervous by the time they reached the top, but at least they managed to pose for cute pictures anyway. :)
Having escaped out the other end of the maze we came to the pumpkin patch. Matthew got us a wheelbarrow and we picked many, many pumpkins.

It was a bit icky because many of the prettiest pumpkins were partially rotten (esp. the handles), but still fun to meander through and find ones that we liked. Eventually we all found ones though--Ziva and Vienna found a rather large one that we cruelly refused to take home with us. Seraya on the other hand was also not too happy with her pumpkin. She wanted the other itty bitty pumpkin.

I picked the best punkin of all though! Unfortunately they made me give her back.

On our way out we swung by the petting zoo and the farm stand and the play park (it was a circuitous way out). I think a good day was had by all.