In addition to my regular duties as Domestic CEO, I also am the official Activities Director for our little group of five touring through life.
(If it were up to Jerry our outings would consist of moving from the left side of the couch to the right, and maybe if he was feeling extra whimsical, a move from the couch to the armchair!)
As Activity Director, and one who can't stand being cooped up inside, I'm always on the lookout for new and awesome activities.
A great kid friendly activity for Halloween is going to a pumpkin patch. But hey, we're in Texas where any old pumpkin patch just won't do!
In Hondo, a town between San Antonio and Del Rio, there is a Corn Maze place with hay rides, a "corn popper" trampoline thing, and a pumpkin patch. Perfect, right?
I looked it up, along with a few other pumpkin patches in the area, and since Jerry was home very early that day, I said, "Let's pick up the kids and go this afternoon!"
"Right now?" Jerry asked from his position on the couch.
"Right now!!!"
So we picked up the kids from school and drove an hour away to the Corn Maze.
The big-fat-gated-locked-closed Corn Maze.
Yep. Closed on Mondays.
Oops. I hadn't noticed that when I looked at the operating hours online!
On the way back to San Antonio disheartened and empty-handed, I used Jerry's smartphone to google another good-looking pumpkin patch I'd seen on the west side of the city.
As we were driving back and were still in the middle of nowhere, we passed a truck with the cutest golden retriever in the backseat.
That fact will be important later.
Two hours after we left and one scary drive through a scary section of San Antonio, we made it to some random pumpkin patch in some random neighborhood at some random United Methodist Church.
I should have guessed we would have ended up at a Methodist Church. That's a common theme in Jerry's and my life; we start out going in one direction and end up at a Methodist Church instead! (Different story for a different day.)
The patch wasn't particularly large but there were a lot of cool pumpkins and tons with severe acne.
Josh liked the pimply ones. Go figure!
He also liked riding the saddle cinched to a hay bail. Hey, nothing says Halloween like riding a hay bail!
Yes it does!
Following in the tradition of my childhood, I enforced the rule: If you can carry it, you can get it. I will not carry your pumpkin for you. Dad will not carry it for you. YOU have to carry it.
Thanks, Mom! That was, and still is, a great way to limit overpumpkin buying!
Phoebe must have picked up every small pumpkin at the place. Somehow she arrived at this one to take home. Thankfully not the squishy one she had been partial to earlier.
And like all good pumpkin patches, they had the obligatory photo op area to capture your families pumpkin fun! So here we all are. I don't know what the kids were looking at but it weren't the camera.
Oh, and there's my pumpkin making its photography debut! It's the tall one, two to the right of my legs.
You'll see it again soon.
But what about the dog, you might be asking?
As we were walking up to the pumpkin patch, who should come up behind me sniffing my butt?
No. You're gross.
The golden retriever! The very same one we had seen on a highway far far away from there in the middle of nowhere! How strange?!!
I stopped and asked the owner if they had just been on Hwy. 90. She said, "Yeah, we wanted to go to the Corn Maze so we drove all the way out there but it was closed! I guess I didn't noticed online that it was closed on Mondays so I googled pumpkin patches on my phone....."