It's the Great Pumpkin, Greyden!

In preparation for my trip to China last week (which will be the topic of an upcoming post), I did what any Rock Star employee would do. No, I didn't work overtime to get things tied up before leaving. I took a day off. Okay, maybe I should have said that I did what any first-time mom would do before leaving her baby boy for an entire week. Two days before I was scheduled to leave, Kevin and I packed up Junior and headed out for a day at the pumpkin patch.

So "Great Pumpkin" might be too strong of phrase for the title of this post. Apparently pumpkin patch in Texas = pumpkins trucked in and dumped in a pile, complete with bar codes. So maybe "It's the Great Store-Bought Pumpkin, Greyden!" may be more applicable here. (Come to think of it, we didn't even come home with a pumpkin. How did that happen?) The "pumpkin patch" we found is about 15 miles from our house and is called Oil Ranch. Note to self: Any place that advertises itself as "Houston's largest ranch for corporate events, picnics, school field trips, and groups" is probably not the most authentic pumpkin patch we could have chosen. However it was the only one I could find so we made do with what we had to work with. 

In addition to the pile o' pumpkins in the middle of the lawn dirt, the ranch housed a petting zoo, some livestock, a train, a hayride, some playground equipment, and other random things. Like a tee pee in the middle of nowhere. Kevin and I both had to laugh at the place. It was very........different from what we used to do with our parents as children. My family vacations or outings involved driving....driving up north, driving up to the UP, driving to the west side of the state, or just driving around the back roads for hours on end. I'd say a good 90% of my childhood was spent riding in a car. According to Kevin, his parents didn't do the commercialized places either, so this was quite an experience for both of us. (I should have known it was not going to be our cup of tea when we had to park next to 98 school buses. Or maybe even earlier than that, when we pulled into the parking lot and Kevin said "SCHOOL BUSES?!?!?!" We probably would have stayed longer had they served beer.) Needless to say, we got to pet some animals, rode the train, snapped a few pictures, and got the hell out of Dodge. But it was fun to spend the day with Greyden and he got to see his first "pumpkin patch". And that's what counts.

Greyden's first encounter with an alien creature.



He liked the baby sheep.



I just liked the look on his face in this one. I really wasn't aiming for the sheep's butt.

After removing the animal feed pellets from Greyden's hands and mouth, we fed them to the sheep. Greyden wasn't happy with us.

Staring contest with the turkey.

He really didn't know what to think of these things. I think they reminded him of our cat Phyllis.

Resigned to being sat on a pumpkin.



He's not quite sure why he's in a wheelbarrow.



 

Pumpkin patch! Please disregard the white bar code stickers on them.

He loves to poke things with his thumb lately. Not sure what that's all about.  

Picking out his pumpkin that we didn't take home with us.

On the train

Trying to figure out how it worked.

Covered bridge

Hair blowing in the wind. He loved it. The kid is an adrenaline junkie.  

Practicing walking over the bridge. If we weren't in a severe drought, there would be water under it.

Random tee pee.

The only other picture of Mommy so I'm adding it.

Cool idea for cable spindles. I don't know why my parents didn't think of this. We only had about a hundred of them around the farm.

I added this picture because I am 12. HAHAHAHAHA!!!!