pa’s pumpkin patch

phil’s in the middle of his sicu (surgery intensive care unit) rotation and pretty much hating life right now.  poor guy.  though he did tell me yesterday that he saved a guy’s life.  apparently the patient was coding and phil managed to bring him back with cpr.  crazy! 

so anyway, phil got his one-day weekend last week on friday.  we decided to make the most of the day and took the kids to pa’s pumpkin patch in long beach.  it wasn’t a real pumpkin patch in that all the pumpkins were imported in and there was no accompanying apple orchard or pretty fall leaves to look at.  but it was the closest one to our place and turned out to be a big hit since most of it was geared towards the really little folks.

on a sidenote, i keep expecting cooler days necessitating layered clothes and fall coats.  friday morning turned out to be overcast and a bit chilly so i bundled the kids up pretty good.  turns out that by the time we got to the pumpkin patch, the clouds had dispersed leaving us with a bright sunshiney, WARM, t-shirt and shorts kind of day.  again.  it’s rained a total of FOUR days since we’ve moved back!  the rest of the days have been a variation of some kind of sun.  even though i grew up in california, i’m still finding it a bit hard to get used to this perpetual summer weather.  but i gotta say that i LOVE the prospect of not having to experience the bottom to drop out temperature-wise with another freezing winter.  that wasn’t my favorite thing.

alrighty, on with the pictures!

 

beach-side pumpkin picking…

 

mikey was fascinated with these white pumpkins.  so was i!

 

[grunt] too… heavy!

 

mikey discovered that rolling these guys was much easier.

 

oh, what the hay!

 

 

ok, so the reason this pumpkin patch was such a big hit with with mikey and allie was because it was also a mini fair complete with kiddie rides and carnival games!

 

 

there wasn’t a height requirement for the train ride, so allie got to ride with mikey.  she thought this was the best thing ever!

 

they’ll be comin’ round the corner…

 

next, mikey and daddy won a prize by scooping up a duck.  (shh, don’t tell them that everyone gets a prize in this game!)

 

then allie tried her hand at duck-scooping.  with mommy’s help.  and mikey’s supervision.

 

two happy kids after they each selected little toy dogs.

 

phil decided to try his hand at darts.  bust two balloons to win!

 

he did it!  so mikey scored a toy clownfish.

 

but by far, mikey’s absolute favorite thing here was the water bumper boat ride.  he loooooved it.  so much so that he rode it three times!

getting some last minute pointers from daddy…

 

lined up and ready to go…

 

and he’s off!

 

one extra-happy boy…

 

this one worker was so nice to mikey.  mikey was the only kid in the pool the third time he went to ride the boat and so this super nice man let him stay in an extra long time, coaching him on how to steer and turn the boat, walking back and forth all around the pool to turn mikey’s boat around and push him back to the middle whenever he got stuck.  with a big smile the whole time!  there were two worker guys there the first time mikey rode the boats and you could tell one of them didn’t really care to be there.  so phil and i just appreciated this person’s kindness to a small boy.