Weekend round up

We did a couple of fall themed events this weekend, which were pretty enjoyable. Saturday, we went to Harvest Fest at Prairie Farms. It was great. They had hayrack rides, bounce houses, face painting, apple painting, pumpkin painting, necklace making, balloon animals, etc, all free. They were fully on the ball too. We got there at 10:50 (it was supposed to start at 11) and not only was it open, everything was set up and the tables were manned and ready to go. The only things that weren't up and running at that point was the hayrack ride and the balloon animals. The kids were able to get in and get things done before it got too crowded, which was great. Lizzie had a horrible melt down that resulted in my dragging her out of the park, while she screamed, cried, assaulted me and begged for her nonni (grandma). My apologies to any local mommies who got to witness that spectecle (sp). She went home and took a 2 hour nap :) C and my mom had such a good time, they ended up staying for 2 hours after we left and doing things several times.

Today, we went to pumpkinpalooza at Allerton Park. The best word to describe the whole thing is unorganized. We got there about 10:50, when it was scheduled to start at 11 (yes, we do generally show up for things early). We pulled in and the parking lot was full. There were a couple of spaces, but they looked like they were in front of a drive of some sort. I asked the girl working by the gate if I could park there and she shrugged and said "I guess, I don't know". So I went ahead and parked there and it turned out to be ok but I later found out there was a large parking lot behind one of the barns that we could have parked in. Once we got parked, we headed inside the barn. The only people in there were vendors so we walked on out the back and found the people that were working (this is probably 10:55 so 5 minutes before they were supposed to start) in a meeting where they were being assigned jobs for the day. None of the crafts were set up, no one was selling tickets for anything, etc. We walked back in the vendor barn and looked around for a few minutes. When we came back out, they had opened the ticket booth, although there were still nothing set up to spend tickets on and set up one craft. At that point there were probably 15-20 kids milling around. Since there was nothing else to do, they were all crowded around this little table trying to make leaf magnets and popcicle stick pumpkins. C started making a pumpkin but after having to wrangle for glue and paint and everything else, he finally gave up and just brought it home to finish. Mom also grabbed a couple of the leaf magnet kits for the kids to finish later. We wandered over to the hayrack ride and found out they were getting ready to take a group back to the pumpkin patch. We hopped on and headed back. It was, swear to God, like 100 yards away but the kids liked riding the on the hayrack. When we pulled into the patch, I noticed there was a gold pumpkin laying on the ground. I told C to grab it and he hopped off the hayrack and did just that. It had a sticker on the bottom saying to take it to the ticket booth to claim your prize. When we got back, C and I headed for the ticket booth and the guy who was selling the pumpkins followed us and said "any pumpkins you picked in the patch is 4 dollars" I sort of looked at the guy and said "this is a prize pumpkin, I'm not paying $4 for it, especially since I probably won't get to keep it". "Oh, I didn't know there was any prize pumpkin" All I could think was "if you had read the 3 whole paragraphs worth of information on the flyer that everyone got as they came in, you would have known it because it said it right there" We took the pumpkin to the booth and they gave us a little stuffed scarecrow guy. C asked if he could keep the pumpkin and the guys responded with "I don't know, I guess so" and C was stoked. He actually started to walk away without the scarecrow and then when he remembered it he said "I don't need that thing, I'll give it to my sister since I get to keep the pumpkin"

About that time, we noticed that they were finally putting up some signs showing where things were, only 30 minutes after it was supposed to have started. We went back in the barn and played some games and got face painting done. When we asked the girls running the games if there were anymore outside, we were told no so we wasted all of the tickets at the couple of games inside. Then, we went back outside because they finally had the pumpkin painting set up. Lizzie went to do that and mom and C went to build a scarecrow. C was bored to tears and they quit after a few minutes but not before we found out there were actually more games outside. We ended up getting some more tickets so that C could do the ring toss and pumpkin bowling. He is quite the rockstar at pumpkin bowling. He managed a spare both times and won himself and Lizzie candy bracelets. :) Lizzie tried real hard at the ring toss, but just couldn't manage it. The guy running it was super and gave her a piece of candy for her efforts.

Th day ended with another trip to the pumpkin patch, picking some HUGE pumpkins to carve our cool designs on (we bought books with princesses and superheroes at Curtis Orchard) and another screaming meltdown when I told Lizzie it was time to leave. I drug her to the car while C spend his last ticket doing the ring toss for warheads sour candy and mom bought a bracelet. We didn't get off the drive into the park before Lizzie was asleep. She ended up taking a super long nap which caused problems at bedtime. In fact, when I started writing this, I was thinking that my last line would be "and if she doesn't sleep soon, I'm going to FREAK OUT" Fortunately, while I've been writing this, she finally went to sleep.

And now, it is time for bedtime for me :)