the farm at swan's trail

madeleine doesn't have school this week because of parent/teacher conferences, so one of the moms in her class arranged a "field trip" to a farm a little ways north of us. the farm was in a beautiful setting and the drive up there was beautiful - up highway 9 and then along an idyllic road that wound along the snohomish river, surrounded by farmland.

because we were a school group, we got a package deal for $6 per kid, which included a hay maze, the play area, petting the animals, a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch, a pumpkin to take home, and some ice cream.

at the end of the hay maze, which went through the barn and ended up in the loft, there was a big slide that the kids could go down. madeleine went through the maze several times. 

diane, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with the hay maze. she parked it in the stroller and waited.

 she finally got out to look at some ducks with jonathan. he kept blowing raspberries at them, which is his generic animal sound right now (the elephant).

diane did finally decide to go through the maze, but when she got to the top was too scared to go down the slide, so i had to go in and get her. i predicted that that was exactly what would happen. 

rubber duck races in the play area. 

an obligatory (blurry) tractor picture of each of the kids. 

 

this was on the hay ride. we all got to sing a song about keeping our bottoms on the bales while it was in motion and then we were off.

 

jonathan's latest thing is giving hugs. he especially likes to do it when the girls are upset (which drives diane crazy). both of the girls were whining about how cold they were (we had left the coats back at the stroller, which i couldn't bring on the hayride), so jonathan kept trying to give them hugs. i told diane that if she stopped whining, jonathan would stop trying to make her feel better.

an attempt at a group shot.

 

searching for the perfect pumpkin. which took all of about two minutes and then we got to wait another twenty minutes in the cold for the tractor hayride to come back and pick us up. the girls were cold and whiny and jonathan was running wildly all over the pumpkin patch, tripping repeatedly and falling in the mud. as a side note, we were the only four people in our entire group (adults included) that were not wearing rain boots. we don't own any, except in jonathan's size, and i'm pretty sure that would have only contributed to more tripping.

more hugging. even though i tried to curb the whining because it was annoying, i can't really blame them too much. it was cold, i had forgotten their coats, and we waited for a long time in a muddy bog for a tractor to come and get us. i wasn't too thrilled at this point, either. 

as another aside (this post has more comments from me than usual. sorry), someone would look at my photos and think that i am incapable of paring them down because i will have two pictures (or more) that look pretty identical. you would think i should just pick the one that looks best, but if they have more than one kid in them, i think "i should keep this one for madeleine, and this one for diane." and so, i have lots of nearly identical photos on my computer. does anyone else do this? 

see? better of diane. but really, the only thing that is different is where their eyes are looking. 

standing in a sea of ten parents all trying to get a group shot. usually i'm tall enough in a group of moms that i can just stand in the back and still get the shot, but this was an unusually tall group of moms and there were several dads, who were also tall.

jonathan didn't get to pick a pumpkin (i didn't pay for him), but i kept thinking i was going to have to buy a broken one because he kept picking them up and throwing them like they were balls. thankfully, he is low to the ground and they were resilient pumpkins. 

after the hayride they got dreamsicles (because that's just what you want on a crisp, autumn day) and my kids were begging to go home at that point. i'm glad that my kids have about the same tolerance level for these things as i do. the sad thing is, randy actually loves pumpkin patches, farms, and corn mazes in the fall and if they had picked any other day of the week, he would have been able to come with us (making my life much easier), but wednesday happens to be the only day of the week he has early lessons. 

i did get one last shot of diane and jonathan as we were leaving. madeleine refused. 

and then there are times when i have nearly identical pictures of the same child. no good excuse here, i just thing they're both cute.  

 

 saying goodbye to the farm.

congrats on making it through my ramblings.