Fall Weekend

We are winding up a crazy weekend that was unusually social and strangely thematic. We made and canned applesauce on Saturday, and on Sunday we went to one of those bizarro, sprawling places where they sell pumpkins and hayrides and tours of the corn maze and whatnot.

Dutch threw some fantastic whining fits in the vast pumpkin field (she was ticked off that we didn't spring for a ride on the Cow Train, which we totally would have sprung for had it actually been as cool as it sounds), but cheered up when we got back to the "farm" and she got to climb on a hay-bale mountain. (Also crawl through the 20-feet-long parent-freakout-inducing culvert pipes placed under the haybale-mountain.) And see the animals in the "Animal Barn," which featured a dead goat. (Seriously. They removed it in a cardboard box while we were there. Dutch didn't notice, fortunately.) It was all both creepy and delightful, and I felt like I was getting to fill some sort of gap in my childhood that I hadn't even realized existed. Picking pumpkins out of a HUGE field, with lots of other people! Cool! We got ourselves $5 worth of pumpkins and some pictures of Dutch ogling squash.

And stepping on rotten pumpkins.

And admiring the peculiar photo op. Aren't these usually supposed to involve bodies for your face? Or is the kid supposed to be a worm in the pumpkin?

Also, we got to ride the tractor hayride, which was very exciting for Dutch, and almost made up for missing out on the Cow Train.