Alejandro, Luis, Mary, and Diego: The Pumpkin Patch

The church at the end of our block had their fall fundraiser this weekend - The Pumpkin Patch. It was a fall carnival of sorts with pony rides, bounce houses, petting zoo, face painting, pumpkin patch, firetrucks, games, and various craft booths (Luis had zero interest in the last two). We got there when it opened (9am) and stayed for more than 3 hours. Besides all of the fun things to do, many of Luis's friends were also there. The only downside was that I had put too much faith in the newspaper forecast - 70-degrees and sunny; it turned out to be 56-degrees and overcast. Luis and I were a bit chilly much of the morning.

In terms of time spent playing, the bounce house was, hands down, the most popular thing. It was crazy and chaotic with no adult supervision. I was pretty certain that there would be tears or blood spilled at some point. Luckily, I was wrong on both fronts. I was really impressed at how kind the bigger kids were to the smaller kids.

Climbing up, then sliding down the bounce house

The petting zoo was nice - bunnies, pigs, baby goats, a lamb and an alpaca. Luckily, no zebras. The baby goats would stand up on their hind legs and "kiss" you over the fence. Bethany has a picture of Luis getting kissed - which I hope to post later.

They had a pumpkin patch with pumpkins for sale. We didn't end up buying one, but spent a lot of time playing with them!

The pony ride was nice - we enjoyed it several times throughout the morning.

Alexandra, Elijah and Luis ride the ponies; Luis and the pretty volunteer

Luis took this picture of the horses - all by himself (he also took many, many pictures of the grass, the side walk and peoples shoes)

The very best "ride" of all was the two firetrucks parked in the parking lot. One had the cab open for kids to get in and crawl around, try on the equipment, pretend to drive the truck, etc. On the second, they extended the ladder out, horizontally, and then allowed the kids to walk across. Luis was a little too small to do it on his own, so I accompanied him. The further out we got on the ladder, the further from the fulcrum, the bouncier the ladder got. We both loved it!