Pumpkin Patch and the Carnival! 10/26
We have some fall traditions that I really love and want to remember! We went to Carmichael's Pumpkin Patch with Mike, Kelly, Carson and Raegan. Serenity and Donovan are always so thrilled to see the kids, and they practically knock them over with hugs and affection. I think Serenity actually did knock Raegan over this year. Raegan was done being hugged at that point I think.
Both kids loved climbing all over the pumpkins. Serenity even asked to go back so she could do more climbing at the end, but I was ready to sit for awhile by then. Serenity found the perfect pumpkin for her in the first five minutes, (she liked it because it was closer to yellow than orange) and so we carried that around until Mike scored a cart.
All the kids really loved the hay maze this year. It wasn't quite as dark as last year. They went through it at least ten times each, sometimes running right back around to the entrance.
My kids loved the pony rides. We got some animal feed, but the animals were already full by the time we got there. =) It was a very busy day at the pumpkin patch!
We ended the visit with a stop at the fudge shop, which is Carson's favorite part. This year we got cookies and cream and amaretto.
The Halloween Carnival at University School is turning into a fun tradition for us as well. I love getting to help with planning and coming up with new games. This year, since I'm co-chairing the book fair with Jen, we decided it would be fun to match the theme of the carnival with the book fair. The book fair theme was Egypt, and that is just so perfect for our school since they do lots of interesting studies about Egypt. So we came up with a whole list of game ideas and ways to make the usual carnival games have an Egyptian twist. So we had a Walk Like an Egyptian cake walk, instead of the usual cake walk. I made an Egyptian temple out of cardboard to be a mini-golf course. We had a bat toss, plinko became "Sail Down the Nile" and I turned the play structure into a pyramid instead of a spooky cave. I also painted an Egyptian cat onto my cornhole toss game, and the playmobil pyramid set that Barrett passed down to us became a nerf gun target in the "Tomb Raider Practice Range." It was a lot of fun! Poor Donovan started feeling croupy, and since he'd been at the school with me since before setup time so we could help at the book fair a bit, when he saw Eric come in he said "Daddy, take me home!" So Eric just spent a few minutes with Serenity on the games in our commons and then took him home for rest and snuggles. I took Serenity around the fair, since I had plenty of parent helpers to cover the booth the first hour. She wanted to explore more, but she had a lot of fun going through our games and collecting all the prizes she wanted. Especially pixy sticks =)
