Pumpkin Patch: 2nd edition

Our trip to the Pumpkin Station was lots of fun, so the boys were all kinds of excited to go to the Bates Nut Farm in Valley Center when my brother, Scott, and his girlfriend, Crystal, had mentioned they were thinking about going.

Now, this place is what the average American thinks of as a "pumpkin patch". There was a hay ride, a straw maze, and fields full of pumpkins. Crystal said that the weekends are crazy there, so we went on a Wednesday morning, thinking the place would be deserted... but we were dead wrong. Turns out it's a popular place for school trips, as evidenced by the scores of children exiting the large number of school buses parked in the lot.

It was still a good time, though.

They thought sitting in a wheelbarrow was HILARIOUS. But not hilarious enough to actually stay in it for any length of time.

Uncle Scott gives some sweet airplane rides.

 

What do you think? Are they related?

Tractor ride! Which we had to explain to Johnny was like a train, otherwise he wasn't interested.

We asked a farm employee to take our group picture and unfortunately all were blurry except for this one.

You can kind of tell it's us, right?

My brother and his girlfriend. Awwww.

 After the tractor ride, we did the straw maze. There were nine stamps you were supposed to find and use to stamp the card they gave us at the beginning, but neither child was particularly interested. They just wandered around while one of us adults followed them. I don't think either of them cared much for the whole thing.

 

Poor Johnny was OVER pictures by this point.

 And, of course, the obligatory petting zoo.

Another fun time was had by all. Though I think I'll skip this one next year and hope they'll be more into it the year after that. The straw maze was the coolest part and they were rather unimpressed. Hmph.

Backlog: The Pumpkin Patch

About a month ago we hit up the Del Mar Pumpkin Station, which seems to be THE place to hit up in the fall if you have small children. They have tons of pumpkins and also, lots of little-kid-friendly rides. So, one Saturday in October when we didn't have any plans, we got the boys excited about picking out pumpkins and drove up there for the morning.

Admittedly, the tickets for the rides were a little steep ($3 a ticket?? Whaaaaaaat??), but we enjoyed hanging out there for a couple of hours, so I suppose it was worth it.

Of course Johnny wanted to go on the Old El Paso train first thing. It was a little tiny train with a little tiny track and he was so cute sitting there enjoying his ride. Just happy to be hanging out on a train.

Hank, on the other hand, scoped out the bounce house first. Which was a win.

 

Then enter the large inflatable slide. After Johnny finished the train ride, he wanted to go down the slide. There were two: a normal sized one, and a super-sized one. I tried to get him to go on the normal size first, but he wasn’t having it. He wanted to do the big white one. Oooookay! We got let in with the next batch of kids waiting in line with instructions to take off shoes, go down feet first, and leave the area after five slides. So Johnny climbed up.

 

And wouldn’t come down.

I was trying to encourage him to come down the slide, but it just wasn’t happening. Any time someone yelled “You can do it, Johnny!” (other parents had caught on to which child he was and thought they would be helpful) he would move further away from the precipice. So John went to get him.

 And he STILL wouldn't go down the slide. So they came down the stairs.

But he still wanted to go down a slide, so I convinced him to go on the small one. Honestly, though, I don't think he would have gone down this one, either, if Hank hadn't been fearless about the whole thing.

Hank hasn't met a slide he can't conquer.

Johnny finally went down and was a little freaked out, as you can tell by his face.

"Hey, this is actually fun!"

 After our success with the smaller slide, the boys wanted to do the large slide. Hank had no problems going down the full five times.

Johnny, on the other hand, went down once...

 And then I had to go get him. Unlike Daddy, though, I was not willing to move my 8-months-pregnant butt backward down those "stairs" so I dragged Johnny with me down the slide.

 The rest of the rides weren't quite as crazy. Another train ride.

 A spinning swing ride for Hank.

 And a rocket ride for Johnny.

 Then, of course, picking out pumpkins.

Hank picked out this tiny pumpkin and said, "This pumpkin is for Mitch!" I nearly died.

Considering they talked about the pumpkin patch for weeks afterward, I'd say they had a good time.

Halloween 2013

I know. It's the middle of November. So sue me.

Neither Johnny nor Hank are particularly into dressing up. Johnny likes to put on the occasional hat, and Hank will follow suit if that's what Johnny is doing, but that's about the end of it. A full-on adorable Hulk costume like my nephew Jack wore is not something either of my kids will do willingly. So, my goal was to come up with a costume for the boys that A) they would like and B) looked mostly like normal clothing so they would put it on.

Enter the construction worker costume.

Both boys have been obsessed with construction vehicles for the past month, so convincing them to be construction workers for Halloween was an easy sell. Johnny informed me that they needed hard hats, tool belts and boots if they wanted to go on a construction site. Well, okay then, kid! I managed to get them child-size hard hats, a couple white T-shirts, and one tool belt (we already had a green one from Aunt Julie, thanks for that!). The boots were a no-go. Mostly because neither kid would try on a single freaking shoe when we would go to the store. So, no boots. Johnny was a little disappointed by that, but hey, I tried. Not hard, admittedly, but I gave a few gos.

Of course they are SFP employees!

Johnny was SO CUTE putting his arm around Hank for photos.

I know. The cuteness abounds, does it not?

Grandma and Grandpa Durso and Aunt Leslie came with us to enjoy the fun.

Little trick-or-treaters

They got a little overzealous with the doorbell ringing and knocking though.

Since last year's Halloween was less than stellar, I really talked up the trick-or-treating this year. I coached the boys on ringing the doorbell and what to say when the person answered the door. I put a lot of emphasis on CANDY.

And they nailed it.

They were ridiculously adorable running up to the door, each ringing the doorbell (sorry neighbors!) and then saying "Trick-or-treat!" in their sweet little voices. Then they'd pick their candies carefully, (well, randomly, really, since they don't didn't know much about candy) and I'd say thank you for them (though sometimes they would say it themselves without prompting) and they'd run away yelling "Next house!"

Not bad for a 2 and 3 year old, right? Of course, if the homeowner didn't stand up with their bowl of candy fast enough, they were in danger of Hank coming back in and taking a second candy, but seeing as our cul-de-sac gets about four trick-or-treaters, and because the boys were cute, no one seemed to mind. :)

The evening went a little downhill when we traveled over to our friend's neighborhood to do some trick-or-treating with them and Johnny decided he was over it. Both of the boys were pretty beat, I think, from all the running and performing, so after about 30 minutes of complaining that we weren't staying at Blake and Asher's house (a favorite place of theirs) we called it a night.

All in all, it was a pretty awesome Halloween. I'm hoping they'll be even more into it next year!

Summer pool picture dump

I took a bazillion pictures of the boys swimming this summer. Probably because they were in the pool everyday and they are ridiculously adorable when they're swimming around. But now I'm realizing that I haven't shared very many on the blog. Therefore, I'm going to share ALL THE POOL PICTURES. In no particular order.

Fearless in floaties

Fearless without floaties. Or a swimsuit.

More naked jumps to Uncle Dylan!

Uncle Dylan showing off.