Lost in a Pumpkin Patch

I haven’t done a personal post for awhile (other than the ramblings you get every single time I post), so today is a personal post day.

If you haven’t caught on by now, I’m pretty much in love with fall.  If I could live in a fall climate surrounded by pumpkins and apple cider and scarves and boots then I’d be all over that.  Unfortunately I haven’t yet won the lotto to make that a reality, so now I just thoroughly enjoy fall when it makes an appearance.  When I lived in NE we had this cute little pumpkin patch we’d go to outside of town.  I have fond memories of going with my BFF and a goat trying to eat our clothing. 

I decided this year that it was high time to go to a pumpkin patch in AZ.

Mr. C was off for fall break so I took some time off on Friday so we could spend a fun day together.  Weekdays off are about the best things ever.  Since it’s rare that I’m off on a weekday, it feels like I’m doing something wrong.  It’s also so intriguing to see so many people out and about….I wonder why they aren’t at work!

We slept in, went for a walk, had a nice lunch downtown, and then headed over to Tolmachoff Farms.  I picked this place because they had a corn maze, and even though I’m from NE, I had never been in a corn maze.  To be honest, I had never actually been that close to cornstalks before.  I never knew they were so big!  So anyhow, we bought our tickets and got an explanation of the maze.  We were given a piece of paper with 6 questions and 6 boxes.  There were 6 quadrants of the maze and we were told that each quadrant had an answer to a question and a mailbox with a puzzle piece that would be taped onto the boxes on the paper.  Once you found all 6 mailboxes with the pieces then you had the map of the maze and were done.  Easy peasy, right? 

I should mention at this point that I had previously done 2 huge mazes in my life.  The first was in England in a shrub maze and for some reason my dad and I were together (both the most directionally challenged people you’ll ever meet), and the second was at the Dole planation with Mr. C on our honeymoon.  In both cases I did horrible.  We were searching for stations with stamps at the Dole planation and after only finding 1 we gave up and went for snacks.  For some reason I had high hopes for the corn maze.  Maybe I was thinking the NE girl in me would get strength from the corn or something.  Whatever I was thinking, it didn’t work.   The maze was supposed to take 45 minutes to an hour.  We wandered around the thing for an hour and guess how many of those mailboxes we found.  ONE!  And we had to be pointed in the right direction to find that one!  We found all 6 questions, but that wasn’t as exciting.  After wandering around for an hour with only 1 puzzle piece we decided we were done.  It was hot and we had passed the exit twice already.  When we got out we saw the family that we kept running into in the maze and they told us they only found 2 pieces, so we felt a bit better about ourselves then. 

We then spent some time in the petting area where I found what I would like for Christmas.  This pony, right here.  He was so soft and so sweet!  I totally understand why little girls ask for ponies – it’s because ponies are AWESOME!

Before we left we picked out a few pumpkins.  Mr. C wasn’t very fond of following me around with 2 heavy pumpkins while I decided if those were the best or if I should swap them out.  He survived though and as we got up to pay we were sucked into also buying some preserves and apple butter.  If anyone knows what I do with apple butter I would really love to know.  People seem to love it so I wanted to try it, but now that I have it I’m not sure what to do!

We finished the day off by seeing “Rush” which I strongly recommend, even if it’s just to see Thor.   Seeing a movie in the middle of the day was also amazing, and we had popcorn which we never do.  It felt like I always imagined it would if my parents pulled me out of school for a fun day!

Tomorrow I’ll show you what I did with those pumpkins!