The pumpkin "farm"

Two things have kept me from posting. 1) I'm sick. And the whole family has been sick on and off over the last few weeks. 2) I lost my camera somehow. I still have hope that it's around, but for now I'm using my digital video camera to take pictures...and they aren't as good.

But basically what we've been up to is being sick (colds/sinus infections/sore throats) and trying to do fall stuff as much as we can when we're feeling up to it. So, on Columbus Day, I grabbed a box of Kleenex and some Sudafed and the whole family headed out to Bengston's Pumpkin Farm in Homer Glen.

There was a lot of stuff like this. Sammy liked it as you can imagine.

And also stuff like this. Everywhere you looked there were large embarassing pictures in which you could stick your head and take a picture. We fell for it.

This one is just fabulous. Honestly, I came out here for a farm fix and a little bit of fall beauty and instead, it was pretty commercial. And it was voted Chicago's best pumpkin farm or something!

Matt in the stocks.

Claire in the stocks.

Some guy carving giant pumpkins to look like Sponge Bob.

Claire's head sticking out of another one of the photo-op posters. Seriously.

Finally, we found a petting farm at least. These tiny goats were so sweet. Sam couldn't get enough of them. You could buy food to feed them (which we did) but they were so stuffed from the other 150,000 kids that had fed them all day that they didn't really eat. The big ones did though.

And he REALLy wanted to ride the ponies.

So, for $5 a kid, they got to walk around in a circle about 3 times on the back of a tiny horse. Claire's legs almost touched the ground. I think this was the official last year for pony rides. These kids need to ride a horse!

Oh, wait, we also got to milk a plastic cow.

Now we can say we're real farmers!

Luella did great, but it was a little hot.

We made the mistake of going into a little haunted barn. The place is made for little kids so we thought it would be pretty innocent, but it was still scary. Matt took Sammy right back out after getting about 5 steps into it (Sam doesn't do scary). Claire wanted to go through but we ended up running through with me covering her eyes.

So finally, we got to the big pile of pumpkins. Not like pumpkins you can pick. Just a big ol' pile of pumpkins. But I did like these blue/green ones.

I need to become friends with a farmer somewhere so I can just go to a REGULAR pumpkin farm once a year, pick one pumpkin, drink some apple cider, look at fall leaves, and then go home. I hate all the commercially stuff. It makes me feel like we're in a big pumpkin mall or something.

But we bought my pumpkin.

And the big orange one that the kids wanted.

And we headed home. We stopped for Oberweiss ice cream on the way home, which made everyone happy for the long drive back to the city.

Oh hello little Wella-Wella. You're still our favorite pumpkin.