Pumpkin Patch Field Trip

This morning was Garett's first field trip - complete with riding the school bus. And boy was it an adventure!

All started well this morning except that it was overcast and drizzly.

We all got to school and shortly after school started the Kindergarten loaded onto the buses. It was about a 40 min drive to the pumpkin patch in a neighboring town. Parents and siblings were not allowed on the bus, so Emalee and I followed behind the buses in our car. Actually, we followed the other cars behind the buses - we were so far back in line (I'd guess about 15-20 cars back) we never again saw the buses until we got to the pumpkin patch! Well, we never saw the buses from our school - About halfway there, our caravan merged with buses and cars coming from another nearby town... I don't know that I've ever seen that much traffic in the pumpkin patch town!

By the time Emalee and I got to the pumpkin patch and figured out where to park, Garett had already chosen his pumpkin.

We didn't know this however. We had a horrible time finding him. It was EXTREMELY muddy and there weren't very many pumpkins in the field. The kids ended up choosing their pumpkins off of a trailer instead of picking them out of the field.

Then the kids went through the maze at the site to waste some time.

Why were they wasting time you ask? Well, the bus got stuck in the mud and we were waiting to see how the kids were going to get back to school. Ended up that the farm helped out by using one of their tractors to pull the bus out!

After the bus was unstuck and Garett loaded up and headed back to school, Emalee and I looked around for some pumpkins for us to take home. At first all we could find were a few green pumpkins and some pretty flowers.

But then we hiked through even more mud to the "gourd patch" where we had some luck finding big pumpkins when we went last year and there we finally found a few. These were literally the only big orange ones we found still on the vines. And they aren't really all that orange!

We might have looked some more and found some more but remember how muddy I said it was. That coupled with the fact that we had parked when the patch was full of school buses and parents and I had a hike back to the car carrying pumpkins at Emalee's speed. If I had been able to walk a fast adult speed, it wouldn't have been too bad, but at a tired Emalee speed, it was hard! Dirty pumpkins are slippery!!!

To put things in perspective, our car is parked by the tree that is directly underneath the orange pumpkin under my arm! It was even further than the single tree that is in the picture to the left of me. It was at least a mile hike! But, isn't Emalee good at taking pictures!