The kids wanted to go "pumpkin picking" as part of their fall bucket list so when I asked them what they wanted to do Thanksgiving Monday, everyone agreed we should check this off our list. It was supposed to rain but after we got home from open mat karate in the morning the rain appeared to have stopped so we decided to go for it. Open mat is when you can do whatever you want in the dojo. There was a lot of gymnastics, some fort building out of pads, much chatting and a wee bit of actual karate.
Erika and Maria came over for lunch so I had six kids for our adventure. We decided to go to Proulx farms because it apparently had many playgrounds, a wagon ride and bouncy castles. I was kind of interested in one that had a zipline and ponies but it was in Van Kleek Hill over an hour's drive away so we settled on Cumberland.
It WAS fun, though I do have to say that apple picking is by far a better deal since we had to pay per person admission in addition to a per pumpkin fee. The wagon ride is setup for Halloween, which was a little surprising. In fact much of the farm was already decorated for Halloween, with skeletons in amusing poses scattered throughout. The wagon ride was also quite long, with a stop for popcorn and cotton candy (extra charge) at an animal zoo made out of haybales. The haybales decorated to be animals and tractors and things was a bit of a theme, and were interesting to look at. There was also a spooky house which looked a bit daunting - actually everyone except Erika initially refused to go in but I took Elizabeth and Michael through and we discovered it wasn't scary as much as it was creepy. After that everyone decided to check it out.
Only Erika was brave enough to do the haunted bouncy castle. Elizabeth claimed she was brave enough but it smelled too bad. It was extremely dark and it did smell. They all went on the more traditional bouncy castle several times, even Michael who felt that life was a bit unfair when he had to come out before he wanted to so the big kids could bounce properly.
The slides and playstructures were very popular, though some of our crew were too big for some of the slides and had to fold up in interesting ways in order to fit.
There was a corn maze here too. Elizabeth and Erika thought it most annoying that I insisted everyone stay together but I had visions of losing kids again and it was getting close to the end of the day. As soon as we found the way out of the rather muddy corn maze I declared that it was time to select our pumpkins. Luckily for us the farm provides wheelbarrows in order to facilitate pumpkin transport. I was amused by the selection process. Maria found her perfect pumpkin within the first thirty seconds. Elizabeth wanted something with a nice shape but not too much in the way of guts. Matthew wanted the biggest pumpkin he could find. Amelia wandered around a while before settling on a rather large pumpkin that won't stand up straight and stubbornly insisted that this was HER pumpkin. Erika must have looked at every pumpkin in the entire field before settling on one of the first ones she looked at and while Michael seemed quite fond of one he could sit on he was easily persuaded to take Elizabeth's runner up "in case she changed her mind".
We headed home at closing with a trunkful of pumpkins and many happy children.
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