Good Cop, Pumpkin Patch Style

I know I've already been waxing sentimental about Fall and going on at length about how we've been welcoming this beautiful season, but I really don't feel I've officially embraced Fall without hitting up a pumpkin patch.  We are lucky here in the Tri-Cities to have Country Mercantile (also known as 'the fruit place' by my Mother) which hosts one heck of a shindig for those wishing to embrace Autumn to it's fullest.

We've been out every year since Audrey was born to pick our pumpkins, but have either skirted around the festivities or come as a small group and haven't had access to the whole enchilada...and I say that because they do have a taco stand...with Mexican coke in the bottle...sigh.  I don't know what it is about those glass bottles, but they do me in every time.  And I really mean that, because not only am I ingesting way more sugar than my body is used to, but they had no glass recycling on site and I ended up hauling four of them back home.

It was worth it.   

I digress!  This year, we headed out on Sunday afternoon with Jackie, Nate and Calvin to revel in some Fall goodness.  The festival they put on is pretty crazy, complete with a carousel, kid-sized roller coaster, gigantic bounce house and ponies!  You can guess what we hit up first.  This time, we actually let Bailey saddle up too and, like her big sister, she took to it like a duck to water.  No big deal Mom, just riding a pony.  Audrey gets very excited when Bailey hits milestones and this one was no different.  I love indulging these girls and there's nothing like a Fall festival to excuse me from my normal Bad Cop duties.

On that note, John might have been a little thrown off when I suggested we let Audrey ride the carousel (which really was trucking and probably subsequently scarred her for life). He started looking at me funny when I handed Audrey a coke and let her go to town, guzzling it down. And his eyes just about bugged out of his head when I came back to the table with cotton candy and let Audrey feed it to her sister.

My excuse was that I was supplying them with a sugar rush since we had skipped nap time, but who was I kidding?  I was Good Cop!  Drunk on Fall!  But seriously, until Eggnog Day this is all I get, folks.  It's going to be a long, bleak month and a half. 

Calvin, I told you we should stop for directions!

Back to festivities: we spent an inordinate amount of time in the petting zoo where Bailey yelled at all the animals and ran away squealing any time one came close to her.  The girls and Calvin all love animals and I love seeing how excited kids can get about llamas or piglets.  It's great stuff. 

After communing with the animals, we hit up the hay bale maze (no corn mazes for these folks!) and it was so sweet to watch the three kiddos try to traverse their way around.  Calvin is big into hand holding, although most of the time it was hard to tell whether he or Bailey was leading or if it was more a case of the blind leading the blind.  Either way, all three kiddos made it out unscathed.

We eventually hopped on a hay ride to the pumpkin patch where Bailey quickly stopped looking around for the perfect pumpkin and started trying to see how many she could hold in her arms or stack in a tower.  Audrey animatedly tip-toed around the pumpkins before announcing she had to poop.

In the middle of a pumpkin patch.

That we had gotten to by hay ride.

Thank you for the curve ball, Dear.  I honestly never see them coming.

So, our trip to the actual pumpkin patch was cut short by me yelling at John to just pick out some pumpkins and we'd meet them back at the main store.  Audrey and I hauled it to the next trailer that came along and I spent a lovely half hour squatting on the floor of a public restroom trying to convince my three year old to poop...which she didn't do.

I didn't think Good Cops had to put up with that.  Maybe that's why I'm currently back to Bad Cop status, enforcing good meals and nap times.  The horror!