Free For Fall (Parts 4&5)

Suzanne made a comment today that rings true now that I think about it. Halloween is almost as busy as Christmas these days. The fun continued this past week, specifically Monday and Wednesday. Suzanne and I paid separate trips to school on Monday. Su was treated to a mother's tea with Jacob's class and I attended "Dad's night" around dinnertime. We both pretty much knew the routine as Jacob had been singing the songs and reciting the catchphrases in the days leading up to this event. It was nevertheless good to see him perform with his classmates and meet lots of new moms and dads. I can't remember if I had posted this but this year's 3 year old class is almost entirely new. The kids were split up three ways and just Jacob and one little girl were holdovers from last year. It took him a while but the teachers tell us that Jacob is adapting to his new friends. He does see old friends like Mason and Gavin regularly on the playground. Now he likes to talk about all of his "friends."

The second batch of pictures are from Wednesday night; the Beau Chene Boo-fet. This has become an annual trip and this year we tabled with the Mills and Parnells along with Nana, Pawpaw, and KK. It was pretty hectic so I did not get many good pics. The first one cracks me up, though, more than any in quite a while. Suzanne had a great idea to make J&P "Thing One" and "Thing Two" from Dr. Seuss Cat In The Hat fame. The costumes turned out well, too, except for one problem. Patrick CANNOT STAND his wig. As in, he will not put it on for one second. I had the bright idea to hold his arms down and put the wig on while Su snapped a quick photo. The end result is the picture that you see. It makes me laugh, I do believe I'll make it my Facebook profile picture!!!

Happy Halloween!

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Free For Fall (Part 3)

Part Three of the Free For Fall installment takes us to Old Mandeville and the Our Lady of the Lake Festival. This was our second consecutive trip to the festival but this year Nana and Pawpaw came along and Suzanne stayed back to take care of house business. The most interesting part of the trip was showing up at 10:15 only to find out the festival started at 11! We managed to find things to do to buy time and stayed about two hours. Jacob won many tickets playing various carnival style games. This year Patrick joined us on the train ride, which is perhaps the slowest moving train in the history of the universe.

 

 

 

 

 

Free For Fall (Part 2)

Our next event in the Free For Fall 2011 lineup was a stop in Poplarville, Mississippi and The Blue Jack Ridge Farm.
We were invited by Mason Lamonico, Jacob best bud at school (even though they are not in the same class this year). This farm was a bit more "touristy" than the first one, but I actually enjoyed it more. The theme was geared more toward Western style games, complete with a saloon. The highlight of the overall farm, though, is the corn maze, which we actually went through.

There was also a petting zoo. Jacob is proving to be a much braver boy than I ever was at his age. Check out the slide in one of the pictures below. He went down that with Mason several times without hesitation. It probably took me until seventh grade to do something like that! He also went on a ride (by himself) through the air. I would call it a slow "Tilt-A Whirl" type ride but again neither Su nor I ever expected he would do this alone. Very proud of our big boy for trying new things! My personal favorite moment was when the free roaming pig decided to try to come try to take a bite of Jacob's snowball.

Free For Fall (Part 1)

What an October it has been! I cannot remember a period of time, up until now, where it seems that something is going on every weekend. It is certainly always a fun time of year with Halloween festivals aplenty, followed by Thanksgiving and Christmas. We started it off THREE weekends ago with two trips to two different farms in two days. We'll start tonight with the first trip to a place called Red Bluff Farms in Folsom, a small rural town outside of nearby Covington.

They regularly host school field trips and open the farm during this time of year with some sort of Pumpkin Patch theme. The pumpkins were frankly a bit scarce but the fun was not.

Among other things, we got to:
See a live sheep sheering
See a cow give milk
Feed a baby calf
Ride in a horse buggy
Take a tour of the farm
See bees making honey
Pick the few pumpkins that remained
Pet baby goats and pigs
Ride antique tractors

We also ran into several people that we knew, which made for a fun day. Here are some photos of the event.