A few years ago my mom and I found this obscure little wild animal habitat place in north Houston that just so happened to have a pumpkin patch and crafts set up for kids. It was great! 2 bucks to walk through the gates, and so many cool things to do under big, shady trees. They had a little stand set up for water and everything. Cute little pumpkin vignettes set up for photos. Free mini pumpkins to take with, and reasonable priced larger pumpkins. Other non-pumpkin things to look at too. Well. THIS year they were soooooo dissapointing!!!! I hope this turns up in searches:
Do not go to TGR Exotics Pumpkin Patch on Spring Stuebner!!!! It is a TOTAL ripoff!!! They are now charging $7 per person at the gate (including Jacqueline). So you swallow that cause you are sort of shocked, right? And polite. And they are smiling. And they tell you "Your ticket comes with a free hay ride!". Then you get inside, and you have to tell your kids that no, they can't have their face painted for $10. And no, they can't paint a mini pumpkin for $5, and no, they can't have a $3 bottle of water. No, we probably won't even go on the hay ride, because the next one with available spots is in 4 hours! So, we just took photos in front of the pricey pumpkins and shoveled corn. OH! And got to pet a baby kangaroo. For $35, you could too.
This is them shoveling corn. They seemed pretty entertained by this, actually...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Christmas card photo? This would scare a few people!
I'm holding baby JOEY.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This was Joey.
~~~~~
This thing better not poop on me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So adorable! I love both these photos.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A couple of Cameron posing with his class pet, Splash.
~~~~~~~~
The shoveling of the corn. Then we left!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay, so the next Pumpkin Patch I will mention is the FREE one at The Woodlands United Methodist Church. It is amazing!!!! And all free!!! We went to a free storytime they were doing one Monday afternoon, and the kids loved it. There were a couple "animal" people walking around, and they served cookies and water. For free. There is a little playground behind the pumpkin patch with was open to everybody. It was great. We would for sure go back, just for fun.
Well, and cause it was free.
Jacqueline was growling at this squirrel.
They aren't supposed to talk inside those costumes, but I swear I could hear a giggle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Saying hello to the... big yellow dog?
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eating our free cookie. This was the best photo I could get.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We tried going back another day for another good pumpkin patch photo.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just not happening this year!
How many hundreds of times have they heard "Look at Mommy! Smile for Mommy!" ugh. ;)
~~~~~~~~~~~
My little Mario and Luigi.
With their loot! I think they took one of our neighbor's entire bucket of candy, because we had WAY MORE than makes sense for the amount of time that we were out there. (What you see here is less than half.)
Hey, somebody had to wear the mustaches.
...and this is Cameron's drawing of the evening. With a heart. :)
We learned an important lesson from last year: until the kids are interested in helping, carve small pumpkins.
Landon's pumpkin. He says he is smiling like his jack o lantern.
Cameron took this photo.
So, on the small pumpkin thing...don't go too small, or it won't carve. At all.
Do you know how impressive this is to 4 and 3 year olds?
Pretty amazing for the 2 year old, as well.
Proud boys! (They both look proud of Cameron.)
This is it. IT.
Ta-DA! Perfection.
I saw this on my friend Shannon's facebook page.
I saw these "mummies" on Pinterest. They took WAY longer than I thought to wrap. So I skipped the eye part. They woulda been cuter with eyes, but...yea. Maybe next year. For our Halloween cul-de-sac party!
Also with croissant dough and also thanks to Pinterest, these little gems have marshmallows and chocolate chips inside. Because we aren't getting enough sweets already this time of year.
At the beginning of October, the class studied apples. This is Cameron stamping paint with apples. He looks a little unsure...but he's doing it!
Coring and peeling an apple for apple sauce. They are using one of those old-school ones you screw on the side of a table!
Here, I think they were making predictions about what would happen to the apple if it was left out overnight. So...most of them were wrong. But it's cute seeing all of their names!
Circle time. (Orange shirt, 11o'clock.)
Stamping in the writing center.
Learning lower-case letters with Mrs. Stockey.
Practice with Ms. Tempio.
Cameron seems VERY proud of himself!
Patterns - everything is a pattern now.
October was our Family Visit - Grandma is helping Jacqueline and Landon write at the writing center. I'm sitting next to Cameron.
J in the writing center.
Landon and Cameron experimenting with dye.
Cameron was star of the week this week!
Ms. Tempio carving the class pumpkin.
Yay Starfish!
Okay, so I put all the photos in the book from our time with Splash, and Cameron wanted to draw his picture. Then we thought it would be fun to write his name really big on the first page. Cameron picked up the marker, and wrote an 'S' just like that!!!! And he proceded to sound out and WRITE SPLASH'S NAME!!!! Except for the 'SH'. I helped there, but he still wrote everything perfectly! With no other help from me! I really am still shocked and so stinking proud.
The rest of our Splash tales. :)
Christmas card photo? This would scare a few people!
This was Joey.
This thing better not poop on me.
Jacqueline was growling at this squirrel.
Saying hello to the... big yellow dog?
Eating our free cookie. This was the best photo I could get.
We tried going back another day for another good pumpkin patch photo.
Just not happening this year!
