A Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

I love the show Jon and Kate Plus Eight. I actually discovered it when Emma was at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital last November. There were very little choices for television viewing if you didn't want to watch cartoons but one of the channels was TLC. Since it was Thanksgiving week they were showing marathons of shows everyday, one day was Miami Ink (I had never seen that before either), one day was Big People/Little World, etc. But Jon and Kate Plus Eight really caught my attention. Finally a family that was a bit crazier than mine! (For those of you who might not know about this show it's about a family with 7 year old twins and 4 year old sextuplets.)

Darrell was the "let's go out and chop down a Christmas tree" member of our family. Our butts would be firmly planted somewhere and he would say "Lets go do something." and we did, almost all the time. So when he died we kind of lost that. Sometimes it was just so much effort for me to do things so I just didn't do it. But then I saw an episode of Jon and Kate Plus Eight and Kate said she wanted her kids to experience life even though there were so many of them. She wanted them to create memories and I realized my kids lives were slipping by because of my laziness.

So this weekend, for the first time since we were in Little Rock (four years ago) we went to a pumpkin patch. It had been awhile since I had my Big Boy Camera out and wanted to use it to take photos of the kids in the pumpkin fields. What a great photo op! I thought. Trace had to work but I told Ross that he WAS coming, executive order. No getting out of this one! Grumbling was involved, especially when I dictated his clothing choices. My children's outfits had to coordinate!

Apparently pumpkin patches are different here. Back in Little Rock we went to an actual field full of pumpkins, walked around and picked our pumpkins. It was a lot of fun and the kids loved it. But here, they have pumpkins laying around on a gravel parking lot in a fenced area. You could pay $5 per person to go do some jumping things and other activities but by the time the my sister-in-law Janne' and her kids, and my family got there it was after 5 pm and they closed at 6. We decided to just get pumpkins.

Needless to say, I didn't get my pumpkin field photos but I made due with what I had and they didn't turn out half bad.

Jenna and Julia when we first arrived.

All my children (except Trace) We had the hardest time getting Ryan to look at the camera, much less smile. Starting with the tallest and going clockwise: Ross, Jenna, Ryan, Julia and Emma.

Photo with me! Yes, Emma is missing a shoe. We lost it somewhere, I just hope it is in the car somewhere because we looked all over that parking lot!

Julia picking up a pumpkin and being her dramatic self.

They had wagons for the kids to pull around and put their pumpkins in. Ryan had the most fun just pulling his little wagon around.

Jenna found her pumpkin pretty quickly.

"Are we done yet???" We had been there about 10 minutes at this point. Ross is holding Emma and trying to keep his teen attitude in check.

My nephew Adam. His father, Rick, and my parents paid the money to go to the other part so we didn't see much of them.

My nephew Dillon. Quite a character this one is! He's obviously exerting much effort pushing his very heavy pumpkin in the wheel barrow.

My brother Kevin and SIL Janne's' kids: Caitlin, Dillon and Zach.

Ryan now has a pumpkin to pull around.

There was bin full of little miniature pumpkins. Ryan's checking them out.

Emma and Ryan on a hay bale in front of a wagon.

Emma loves her little pumpkin and carried it around the parking lot pumpkin patch.

Ryan at the very end of out outing. He finally got relaxed just as we were about to head to the car. And yes, he needs a hair cut!