Today was glorious. It was crisp and clear and warm enough. So, for a day that I was going to be hanging out with 12 four and five year olds, that was a relief. Because I can get over heated when just dealing with the 3 four and five year olds in my own home. Weather related relief helps. Alot. I dropped off the twins and ran to Starbucks. Starbucks evidently reads my blog because they brought back the salted caramel hot chocolate that I told them to. So I ordered one today. Non-fat. Because that makes a HUGE difference once you pour in the caramel syrup and chocolate syrup and such. Here is my side-note impression of the salted caramel hot chocolate. More salted. Less hazelnut. What the hello-kitty are they doing putting hazelnut into my hot chocolate? Just the salted and the caramel, if you please! 5 out of 10 Jenny's jewels. Something warm and thick and sweet on a day like today is a bonus. But it needs to be more of what it says it is and less of extra.
Anywho. Today was the preschool trip to the pumpkin farm. And I volunteered to be a driver. I have never been on a field trip for the kiddos before so that was a large portion of my newness for today. I also haven't been to this particular pumpkin farm before (kind of... read all about it in the following paragraphs. Patience, ya'll!).
Pumpkin Patch @ Parky's Farm:
I love Parky's Farm. It is part of our city's rich park system. It has a play barn where you can take the kids to run around like the freaks they are bumping through huge soft carrots hanging from the ceiling, playing in ball pits, sliding down slides. It's awesome. There are also some sweet little ponies that let kids sit on top of them for the duration of once around a small circle. It's lame as an adult to pay the money but the look of your kid on top and the smile on their face makes up for the $2 charge pretty good. There are animals to examine - goats and llamas and chickens, oh my! There is a garden where you can rub the lemon balm between your fingers and sniff in the lovely citrus oil. There is a hive where you can check out the whole bee gig. A playground in the shape of a barn and picnic tables round out an awesome and free experience. 'Cept for the ponies and the play barn charges. Which I already checked you out on. So. This charming place ups the ante for Halloween. They add lights and tractor drawn hayrides and akatipillion photo opportunities. I heard that this is where we were going to our pumpkin farm trip and I was surprised. I had been to Parky's farm and couldn't register a patch o' pumpkins being there before. But whatev. I figured I just had not been observant enough before. I know. Not bloody likely. So me and my two kids and their pal set off and started with a wait for our hand stamp. Nothing starts off a good time like making a bunch of preschoolers wait to do something they are super excited to do. Actually, they handled themselves pretty well. And then they got their hand stamped which always seems to make a kid happy. We got into the playbarn and let them roam crazy for a while. We had a brilliant bunch of adults running point and keeping tabs. I say this because I was one of them. After an amazingly LONG bathroom run, we made way towards the tractor pulled hay ride. We had 12 kids, 5 adults and one other family and could easily have have fit 3-4 more families on with us. It was awesome. Plus the other part where there were no hay fevers among us. Cuz that would have really put a cramp on our hayride. What with all the hay and all. We rode through staged areas of skeletons and inflated characters. I took pictures and a quick video. It was awesome. Our hayride ended with the "pumpkin patch". Here is how this played out. We were dropped off in the garden area. But I was all disoriented and such because I have not entered the garden from this direction before. The pumpkin patch was a fenced in area of mini pumpkins carted in from some other vicinity as there was no growing area in this garden. The kids obviously didn't care. The loved the mini-ness of the these pumpkins. Their requests to turn these into jack-o-lanterns was going to be problematic, but still. So. We played in the garden. We swatted bees while we ate lunch. The sun settled behind some clouds and chilled the air and we were done.
I give Parky's Farm a 10 out of 10 Jenny's jewels. This, and the entire park system of our city is really a gift. Everyone who lives here has access to clean playgrounds and learning about donkeys and how to milk a goat. And Parky's during Halloween gets 10 out of 10 Jenny's jewels. This is a great family friendly place to go with little kids. It's not scary. It's corn hole and bonfire and roasting marshmallows and tractor hayrides in the dark. As a pumpkin farm, I've got to go a little stingy. I'm going 6 out of 10 Jenny's jewels. My preschoolers were happy but if I were to try to pull that over on my older kids or Hubs, it could have gotten a little ugly. We like to see the pumpkins rotting out in the field. It feels very organic (not PC we didn't use poison to grow your food organic, more pertaining to the basic constitution or structure of a thing organic. - Yes, of course I used dictionary.com to work that out for ya.) to see farm to table kind of results. I want to see all kinds of colors and shapes and sizes and drink cider and peruse gourds and it needs to be an all encompasing experience. As a preschool trip, it was great but we are still looking for a pumpkin farm to call our own as a family and return to year after year. If you have some suggestions to that end, be sure to make 'em. In the mean time, I'll keep you posted. With like a blog post or somethin'.
Anywho. Today was the preschool trip to the pumpkin farm. And I volunteered to be a driver. I have never been on a field trip for the kiddos before so that was a large portion of my newness for today. I also haven't been to this particular pumpkin farm before (kind of... read all about it in the following paragraphs. Patience, ya'll!).
Pumpkin Patch @ Parky's Farm:
I love Parky's Farm. It is part of our city's rich park system. It has a play barn where you can take the kids to run around like the freaks they are bumping through huge soft carrots hanging from the ceiling, playing in ball pits, sliding down slides. It's awesome. There are also some sweet little ponies that let kids sit on top of them for the duration of once around a small circle. It's lame as an adult to pay the money but the look of your kid on top and the smile on their face makes up for the $2 charge pretty good. There are animals to examine - goats and llamas and chickens, oh my! There is a garden where you can rub the lemon balm between your fingers and sniff in the lovely citrus oil. There is a hive where you can check out the whole bee gig. A playground in the shape of a barn and picnic tables round out an awesome and free experience. 'Cept for the ponies and the play barn charges. Which I already checked you out on. So. This charming place ups the ante for Halloween. They add lights and tractor drawn hayrides and akatipillion photo opportunities. I heard that this is where we were going to our pumpkin farm trip and I was surprised. I had been to Parky's farm and couldn't register a patch o' pumpkins being there before. But whatev. I figured I just had not been observant enough before. I know. Not bloody likely. So me and my two kids and their pal set off and started with a wait for our hand stamp. Nothing starts off a good time like making a bunch of preschoolers wait to do something they are super excited to do. Actually, they handled themselves pretty well. And then they got their hand stamped which always seems to make a kid happy. We got into the playbarn and let them roam crazy for a while. We had a brilliant bunch of adults running point and keeping tabs. I say this because I was one of them. After an amazingly LONG bathroom run, we made way towards the tractor pulled hay ride. We had 12 kids, 5 adults and one other family and could easily have have fit 3-4 more families on with us. It was awesome. Plus the other part where there were no hay fevers among us. Cuz that would have really put a cramp on our hayride. What with all the hay and all. We rode through staged areas of skeletons and inflated characters. I took pictures and a quick video. It was awesome. Our hayride ended with the "pumpkin patch". Here is how this played out. We were dropped off in the garden area. But I was all disoriented and such because I have not entered the garden from this direction before. The pumpkin patch was a fenced in area of mini pumpkins carted in from some other vicinity as there was no growing area in this garden. The kids obviously didn't care. The loved the mini-ness of the these pumpkins. Their requests to turn these into jack-o-lanterns was going to be problematic, but still. So. We played in the garden. We swatted bees while we ate lunch. The sun settled behind some clouds and chilled the air and we were done.
I give Parky's Farm a 10 out of 10 Jenny's jewels. This, and the entire park system of our city is really a gift. Everyone who lives here has access to clean playgrounds and learning about donkeys and how to milk a goat. And Parky's during Halloween gets 10 out of 10 Jenny's jewels. This is a great family friendly place to go with little kids. It's not scary. It's corn hole and bonfire and roasting marshmallows and tractor hayrides in the dark. As a pumpkin farm, I've got to go a little stingy. I'm going 6 out of 10 Jenny's jewels. My preschoolers were happy but if I were to try to pull that over on my older kids or Hubs, it could have gotten a little ugly. We like to see the pumpkins rotting out in the field. It feels very organic (not PC we didn't use poison to grow your food organic, more pertaining to the basic constitution or structure of a thing organic. - Yes, of course I used dictionary.com to work that out for ya.) to see farm to table kind of results. I want to see all kinds of colors and shapes and sizes and drink cider and peruse gourds and it needs to be an all encompasing experience. As a preschool trip, it was great but we are still looking for a pumpkin farm to call our own as a family and return to year after year. If you have some suggestions to that end, be sure to make 'em. In the mean time, I'll keep you posted. With like a blog post or somethin'.
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