The Pumpkin Patch

Today we ventured out into the wide open countryside surrounding Colorado Springs to a family farm that transforms in the fall into a sort of pumpkin patch/rural amusement park. It got well into the 70's today so we enjoyed a fantastic day outside after the frigid 20 degrees with freezing rain weekend we suffered through last weekend - we are being told by the locals that this was a totally freak occurrence - we'll see...

We were about 15 minutes into our tour when the unthinkable happened...the camera battery died! This has never happened to me since owning my wonderful Nikon. I don't know exactly what happened, but I guess we used up a lot of battery at the zoo last night with all of the flash requirements and such.

So, since we are the great parents that we are, some of our children's beautiful childhood memories are relegated to the fuzzy 1 megapixel images we could capture with Cris' cellphone.

Yes, they let me ride on the kids train since the girls were too small to ride by themselves. The "train" was really just a dressed up riding lawnmower with plastic 50 gallon drums being drug along behind.

Do I look out of place?

The girls LOOOOVED the farm animals which included sheep, pigs, donkeys, horses, goats, rabbits and even a CAMEL!!

Insert Camera Battery Dying - The Clear Decrease in Photo Quality From This Point on Signals the Beginning of Cell Phone Photography

We found these awesome skeleton shirts for the girls that Cris wants to believe are anatomy shirts and NOT Halloween skeleton shirts.

Nova LOOOOVES seeing chickens and everytime she walked up to one she started singing one of her favorite songs "I know a chicken..." by Laurie Berkner Band

Though we didn't get any pictures of the Hay Pyramid (Cris was less than impressed) they did have this cool "hay slide". Nova and Juneau both shocked the onlookers when they begged to go down 'by self' and then headed straight down the giant slide all by their tiny little selves --- and LOVED it! They immediately asked to go again but the line was super long so we headed off to the pumpkin patch.

Nova was actually even more adventurous than Juneau (who went down on her stomach) - Nova slid right down on her little rear and smiled the whole way but unfortunately the picture didn't come out - maybe if we had an iPhone.

The girls had a great time walking around the "pumpkin patch". For those of you who are loyal followers of our humble blog, you know EXACTLY what Nova is preparing to do in this picture:

That's right...Nova was CONVINCED she could lift the pumpkins

The girls finally settled on a couple pumpkins that looked good for carving. (Yes, Nova is still trying to pick up the heavy pumpkins)

We are still trying out a couple of different churches in the area. We have been to one tiny little church in a renovated apartment building and one giant megachurch that has made national news on several occasions in the last few years. Neither were quite the right fit for us. Today we went to a church that is held in "Mr. Biggs Family Fun Center." It's like a giant and ridiculously elaborate Chuck E Cheese. The upside is it would be pretty sweet to go to church where you can ride the go-carts if you get to church early.

I have a busy week ahead. I am working all week and also all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I really hate working all weekend long.

Some other quick mini-updates:

*We should be closing on our house in the next couple weeks. Happy to be done but very sad to lose a lot of money due to the nasty real estate market right now.

*I am taking advantage of FREE Disney tickets offered to active duty military until the end of the year. I am taking the girls to Disney next month while Cris is in Hawaii for a business trip. My sister lives in Florida and she and her kids are joining us. It is going to be ridiculously awesome.

*I have some delicious apple crisp baking in teh oven right this second and it smells so wonderful.