Red Cheeked

The weekend before we left for Utah Matt took the boys and me to a pumpkin patch. But oh, it was so much more than that. It was a little moment of perfection. I've been sick this weekend and so the memory of this little trip needs to be documented...to perfection!

It was a cold (and by the looks of my hair windy) day. The weather drove away the faint-hearted so we were the only ones on our tractor ride to the apple picking spot.














The driver of the tractor upon dropping us off gave us suggestions of some yummy varieties and said, with a kindly wink, to just rub them on our shirts and try a few. Between our cold cheeks and the blushing apples it was a red-cheeked day (hence the title).

So we picked.














































And we tasted.




































We picked some more.














































And we tasted.






















































Mmm mmmm mmmmm.

We appreciated the little signs at the end of the rows indicating the variety. We were intrigued by a sign for some "Honey Crisp" apples but found that those trees were stripped bare. When we bought our apples the clerk told us that the honey crisp apples are pretty much gone the first weekend of the picking season because they're so good. Subsequently Jacob told everyone for a few weeks afterward that "at the apple picking place the honey crisp were all gone" with a look of concern and sincerity. Seriously, what a yummy, cereal-ey sounding name. Has anyone had one?














The boys spent some time working on the farm too.














Those plastic cows needed lots of hay.


















The scattered bits of hay in the barn needed raking.


















And the fields needed plowing.














Jacob also had a sincere wish to pet every single goat in this pen. He got just about all of them and had to be torn away from the two that remained out of reach.










































Matt got the boys lost in the hay bale maze, but Jacob kept his wits about him and found the exit eventually. (Matt was totally crying and freaking out even though I kept saying, "I'm right here!" So dramatic.)




























We rode on the "moo choo".




























And totally secondary to all of the above activities, to say nothing of the dozen pumpkin and cinnamon doughnuts we bought...there were pumpkins.














I'd like to say a big Bravo for Matt. He took time out of his school schedule to take us on this outing and we're just not outing people, so it was big. Thanks baby.