A Beautiful Fall Sunday

Today we took the kids and traveled down to Bloomsbury Farm, which is a pumpkin patch down near Cedar Rapids. It cost $20 for all of us to get in, which wasn't bad considering there was so much stuff to do. I think we spent five hours there, and we didn't even get to see and do everything. Also, we had tons of fun (which led to this mama not taking very many pictures of the activities)

There were little tractors and tricycles to ride around on (not to mention go-carts and a barrel wagon which looked very fun, but we ran out of time so Ava didn't get to ride it)

Ava really liked playing in a maze of HUGE tractor tires. She also got to go down big slides and play on a wooden John Deere tractor.

The farm had all kinds of Barnyard Buddies. We saw ducks, chickens, llamas, goats and of course some cows. My new favorite animal is the Teacup Pig (Craig said there is no way we will ever own one of these... but hey he also said we would never own a chihuahua...) I didn't get a very good picture of them, so I had to find one online.

Probably Ava's second favorite activity was the duck water races. They had water pumps at each side, you put the duck on the track and pump the water until the duck gets to the other side. Then another person picks up the duck and puts it on another track and sends it back to you. The duck races went something like this...

Ava puts the duck on the track.

Craig helps pump the water while Ava screams and cheers.

Ava cries "duck come back!" (and repeat several times)

Here's a picture of Trevor since I kinda left him out today :(

I think Craig's favorite thing was the pumpkin cannon. Every hour or so they would put a couple pumpkins in this cannon and fire it off. These things flew fast and far. Their target was an old pickup way out in this cornfield. It was pretty beat up and it was pretty cool to watch the pumpkins hit it. They also had a corn cannon, but we didn't get to see that.

So Ava's favorite thing of the day was the Corn Box. (Batta Al needs to make one of these for the girls to play in at his house). This box was huge, bigger than our bathroom, though that doesn't take much.

Ava rolled and rolled around in the corn. She dug in it, buried her feet and dumped it all over her head. She LOVED this. We had a rough time saying bye bye to the corn.

Trevor even got to "play" in it for a bit. I don't think he liked it as much.

After we pulled Ava away from her corn, we went on a hay ride out to some pumpkin patches. We thought about going through the corn maze, but it's 10 acres long. Instead we could see some of it from outside, so we stepped through and played around for awhile. Ava kept trying to eat the corn, so we didn't stay here too long.

Finally, what would a pumpkin patch be without pumpkins? Ava struggled a little with the bigger pumpkins, but we found some just right for her.

This is the one Craig and I picked out. We took it home to carve. I will post pictures of that adventure some time later this week. If anyone is looking for a fun fall weekend, I would suggest heading out to Bloomsbury Farm, I know we will be coming back next year for sure!