Dude. I am so far behind. After hearing Christmas music playing today at Target, I realized that I have not posted any of our fall pictures. And we do a lot of stuff in the weeks preceding Halloween. So here we go.
We have had a membership to Arbor Day Farm for many years, and we always head down there in the fall for apples. The lady at the desk remembers us every time, and she greets us with, "It's the Hamiltons!" and a hug.
We made hammocks in the nature classroom.
We played on the giant wooden marimbas.
We got lost in the corn maze, although we didn't call 911 like those morons in Massachusetts. We just walked out.
We picked apples.
Lots of apples. The orchard has a heritage orchard, where you can occasionally pick apples that are too delicate to be sold. They have wonderful names, like Brown Snout and Bumble Bee Sweetning. How can you compare Red Delicious to that?
We walked the interactive trail. This songbird display has a recorder on it, and you are supposed to mimic the bird calls and then listen to them played back. We did that exactly once. Now our time at the display consists of the kids recording themselves shouting "butt", "poop", and "fart", and laughing hilariously when it plays back.
We relaxed in the spider web. A group of homeschoolers on a field trip came by after us, and they were the most polite children I have ever met.
And there's so much more. There is a big treehouse, an education clubhouse, a discovery trail with a ride, many more exhibits, a greenhouse, an apple house, and a whole educational thing inside where a hologram talks to you and the sky storms overhead. We love this place.
Then we headed out to our annual pumpkin patch extravaganza. We go to Roca Berry Farm, which is the poor cousin to Vala's Pumpkin Patch in Gretna. Everyone says how much they love Vala's, which is all fine and good for them, but I'm not interested in paying $50 just to get in and mingle with thousands of other people who also love Vala's. We did Vala's for two years, until we realized that Roca was just down the road, that it was cheaper, and that it doesn't get as much traffic. That being said, Roca has been a little rough around the edges for the past few years, but this year they cleaned up and added some new stuff. And I had a Groupon to get us all in for $16. Score!
We slid down the big castle slide.
Another corn maze.
There were bouncy houses.
Mike tried to pick up the racing pigs, just to see how heavy they were.
We posed.
A lot.
Then we found these bouncy pillow things. I fell off and broke my finger. Oops!
We went on a hayrack ride, and it rained like crazy on us. But hey, there were pumpkins!
Then the farm dog found us and bonded with Bailey.
