Vala's Pumpkin Patch

(Note: Click on the photos to super size. It was taking me too long to sit and enlarge them this time...)

Vala's Pumpkin Patch is the best of all pumpkin patches! It's got everything that you could ever want in the fall time~pumpkin fields, apple orchards, haunted houses, live bands in the evenings, fire pits, hay rack rides, turkey legs, pig races, pumpkin catapults, petting zoo, kettle corn, corn maze......it's a wonderful place to bring the day care kids and we try to go every year! This time we had a large group of Me, Bill and Sawyer, five of my day care kids, my friend Arliss and her husband James, their daughter Nora, my friend Emily and her husband Brian, their three kids and her two day care kids, my friend Laney and her two kids!

We picked the most perfect day to go because the weather was just great and it was the middle of the week so we kind of had the place to ourselves! I borrowed a friend's van to transport some of my kiddos and I felt like a mother for four little girls! They just gibber jabbered the entire way!

Me and my day care kids on the huge rocking chair!

Here is the motley crew on our hay rack ride through the pumpkin fields! It was a bumpy ride and some of the kids looked like they were dozing off :)

Me and my girls!

Of course we spent way too much time at the petting zoo.....after purchasing ridiculously over priced animal feed that kept somehow falling out of chubby little hands and into the dirt, we tried to feed the goats, lamas, camel, donkeys and one random goose that was in there! The kids just LOVED it when the little baby goats would stick their pink tongues out and grab the food-it always erupted in a bunch of giggling!

...and we had to feed more baby goats in the storybook gardens too!

The boys (and I'm including Bill too) got a real kick out of this hand cranked conveyor belt that you put food into that would feed the goats at the top!

One of the things the kids got most fun out of was the GIANT two-story red slide that comes out the side of a barn! They come shooting out of there SO fast that we needed someone down at the bottom to be somewhat of a barrier wall to stop them. They each went down probably ten times and squealed with delighted fright each trip!

Of course we had to get a shot of all the kids together because they looked waaay too cute!

There are piggy races on the hour that go along with this little skit that the farmer and his cousin do-none of the kids got the piggy jokes at all (they were pretty cheesy!) But most of the older kids got picked to go up and cheer for one of the pigs and Sawyer's little guy actually won! So he got a rubber pig nose as a prize and his pig got a crumbled up cookie in his bowl of food :)

We stopped and took a much needed break for lunch and battled the bees for our food.

They made the rounds of the bunny town, but were a little ticked that they weren't allowed to jump the fence and pick them up....

We headed to the education barn to start our apple tour~the kids sat very nicely while the teacher explained the life cycle of the apple. She started off by asking, "Where do apples come from?" and being the city kid that he is, Sawyer yells out, "From the STORE!" Then we headed into the orchard to pick some apples off these kid-sized little trees!

Kendyl Me and Charlotte in the apple orchard.

We had to keep reminding the kids to not just yank the apples off the branches, but to twist them gently until they come off. They all had a grand time running from tree to tree looking for that perfect apple!

It was a L-O-N-G day and fun was had by all! What a great way to kick off the fall season! It was a pretty quiet ride home*

Sawyer has been very excited since then about the apples that he picked and keeps asking to eat them for snack....so he picked three and has eaten about six....and hasn't figured it out quite yet :)