Why I {heart} Fall

Fall is officially my new favorite time of year. I love it. The color of the leaves, the perfectly cool, crisp weather, decorating the house with fall decor, the smell of pies baking in our oven, the coziness of our house, the fall-related family activities (the fair, the pumpkin patch, etc.), the holidays, and the list goes on.

At the pumpkin patch - 2010

Love finished ASBC and we went to his graduation this past weekend. He received Distinguished Graduate (DG) and Outstanding Contributor (OC) - I'm super proud of him. While we were in Alabama (AL) we figured we might as well hit up the pumpkin patch since Florida doesn't seem to have any farms like the ones we're used to. 

I searched high and low for farms near Pensacola to do our annual pumpkin patch trip to no avail - all I found were places that already had pumpkins picked and ready for customers to buy - but that doesn't do it for us Rumbargers - we want the whole kit-n-kaboodle. We wanna go to a farm that has animals for the kids to interact with, activities to do, food to eat, and a hay ride that takes us out to the pumpkin patch where we get to pick our own pumpkins. 

So, I found this place called Dream Field Farms near Montgomery and we had such a good time. I'm making this post a quick one because I have like ZERO time to write; my Love is only home for a few days before heading to IFS (Initial Flight Screening) so we are busy doing things we missed while he was gone for the last six weeks.

I've got loads of pictures but I won't post them all here - it'd probably be too overwhelming. If we're friends on FB check the rest out there, I'll attempt to put them up sometime within the next day or two - but then again I said that about my kiddos back-to-school pictures and I've yet to get that blog up. Bleh.

First things first. On our way to AL we were "in the zone" - rockin' out to songs we all love. "Only Exception" comes on and I hear my trio singing in unison, I glanced in my rearview mirror and they were all using their lollipops as microphones, it was the cutest thing ever and I had to take a picture. I had one shot (and one second) at getting the picture right because I was...ahem...driving and this is how it came out.

Not too shabby considering my lens was on manual focus and I obviously couldn't manually focus it, I had to point and shoot so I'm just glad I was able to get a clear shot with everyone in it. I smile every time I see this picture because it brings me back to that moment hearing them all sing "...darlin' you are the only exception, you are the only exception..." 

Super cute; those three.

So, the next day, we headed to the pumpkin patch after Daddy's ceremony. The first thing we checked out was the animals. When we were all petting the animals, Owen stuck his hand in a donkey's mouth and apparently it bit him, he didn't have a mark on him but he was pissed (according to the look on his face) and wanted nothing more to do with the donkey's after that. Daddy finally convinced our little guy to feed the goats and he was excited when a baby goat came running up to him after it escaped from it's pen.

The culprit - he ticked Owen off for a good five minutes.

Ari took a picture of the rabbit and then showed the rabbit how cute it was by showing the rabbit the picture she just took of the rabbit. Did you get any of that? I didn't think so.

This dude kept sniffing Ana's foot and I was afraid he was gonna try and nibble on her, but he never did and she wasn't scared. "It's okay Moooooooom!" she kept saying in a "don't you know I'm the 'Cow Whisperer'?" kind of tone.

The pigs were cute but obviously weren't very socialized, every time we went near them they moved together (like a school of fish) away from us. It was so funny - we would move slowly away from them and at the same time they'd moved slowly toward us. Then we'd move slowly toward them and they'd move slowly away from us. We'd move fast. They'd move fast. If I had been thinking, I would've broke out the video camera, I'm sure we would've won America's Funniest Home Videos (hold on, is that show even on anymore?) The pigs were playing in the mud before we so rudely interrupted them.

The kids buried each other in corn as if it were sand and we were at the beach. They slid down slides and bounced in the jumpy castle. They jumped from one big hay bale to another. They had a water race. We (yes, me too) were pulled by a tractor and the driver zipped us around making us laugh and scream. We kicked off Fall in a great way.

They're on there somewhere :)

My parents have a picture of an outhouse at Grant's Farms from when I was little
and now every time I see an outhouse I smile and think back to our Grant's Farm trip.

We wrapped up our visit to the farm by taking a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch where the kidlets picked their own pumpkins. Our rule is: If you pick it, you gotta be able to carry it. I learned this rule from my girl friend Shaleen who has two kiddos of her own. I didn't too much mind getting four huge pumpkins when my youngest was still at the age where I had a stroller at all times (which usually doubled as a "throw the stuff on here you can't/don't wanna carry" wagon). But now that I rarely use a stroller I don't have something to put things in. So if it can't fit in my purse (which, if you know me, is usually pretty massive) then it has to get carried. And Mama and Daddy can't/won't carry 18 big ass pumpkins around, there's where THE RULE comes in handy.

If I had the time I could write about so much more that has been going on but I'll have to save that for another day. In the meantime, enjoy the changing weather, break out the "pumpkin spice" smellin' candles, and make a holiday decoration or two to get you in the mood for the best time of year - Fall!