Pumpkin Pick'n

When the boys were little, we used to take them to a Pumpkin Patch. After we built our home and actually had room for a garden, we started planting our own pumpkins. It was always fun to watch them grow and have the kids pick which one would be theirs in the fall. The last few years, we've had pumpkins coming out our ears, but for some reason, we didn't get one that survived this year. Our porch has been bare and driving me nuts! With the kids out early all week for Parent Teacher Conferences, I begged every day for the family to want to go to the Pumpkin Patch. Every time I brought it up, all I heard was whining....except for Sister, of course.......she was game. Finally, yesterday, I took the bull by the horns and didn't care what anyone thought! I loaded the kids up in the car, called Trav and told him to meet us there, and off we went to Packs Pumpkin Farm. All I heard the whole way was, "How long are we going to be there?" "Why do we HAVE to go, this is SO dumb." "Can't we just go to Smith's and buy some?" Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah!! I just chose to ignore it. I only ask for 2 things per year: Family Pictures and a Christmas Tree hunt. This year, I asked for 3 and you would have thought I was trying to personally torture everyone! I had sweet revenge however, when within 2 seconds of us pulling in to the patch, the boys were already running through a hay maze with Huge smiles on their faces. Mom's out there, raise your hands if you love instances like these, as much as I do.....where they have to look you in the eyes and tell you they were wrong and that you actually ARE a super star with GREAT ideas sometimes! The kids loved it! Infact, we stayed almost an hour! They ran clear to the end of the patch in search of the perfect pumpkin.
After we picked the place over, the kids took turns running through the maze again, only this round, they were being timed and trying to beat each other. After watching all three run through, hearing their times, and still harboring some feelings over their not wanting to come......I told Trav to reset his watch and off I went, running like a child through the maze. All I could think about was beating every single one of them. Don't judge me. :) Unfortunately I came in 3rd, just a couple seconds under the boys. However, I'm not buying that, because I was in flip flops. Shouldn't I get spotted a few extra seconds just for that fact alone? We went in to buy our pumpkins and were excited to see that they still had the talking farmer guy. Only, he wasn't talking yesterday, and we asked why. Some poor teenage kid let us talk him into doing it for Julia. Telling us he was horrible at it, he gave into our pressure and headed behind the scenes to make it talk. Julia asked the farmer his name and there was nothing but silence and laughing. The poor kid had so much stage fright over it, he couldn't even come up with a name. Trav said, "Looks like the cat has your tongue, huh?" More laughter and then the farmers mouth moved and said, "Yeah, kinda struggling here!" We all had a good laugh over that. We took off.......with 21 dollars worth of pumpkins in our car. Other than the fact that we could have bought a ton of seeds for that price, I think I might want to secretly sabotage our garden so we can do this every year! Pack's - you sure know how to throw a good time for a family of 5 who didn't want to come in the first place!