Pumpkin Patchin'

On Saturday we went to Aplin Farms! We had a great time visiting with the animals...

And playing in/on the inflatables...

I seriously loved the slide and may have overly encouraged that we keep going on it...

We also loved being pumpkin heads...

And when we needed a little snack/drink break, we hopped on the train for a ride through the sunflower fields...

After resting up on our train ride, we took a wagon ride out to the pumpkin patch, and we sniffed beautiful sunflowers...

We hunted for the perfect pumpkin...

Makaela may or may not have grabbed one, yelled "bAWWWL!" (ball) and rolled it aggressively. Oops. 

We explained they were pumpkins and she looked at us like we were nuts, and requested a "han" (hand) to hold and continue walking through the field. She tripped and face planted in the dirt approximately 7 times, but who's counting?

Turns out she did know what pumpkins were because a little later she started greeting all of the pumpkins. "Hi Pum Hi Pum!" and then she would bend down and kiss it. 

Lottttts of love for dem pumpkins...

And when we told her we had to leave to get back on the wagon, you guessed it, she changed her tune to "Bye Pum!" and the kissing continued...

What a great time we had, and what a different experience from last year. Look how little baby Mak was last Fall!

That little pumpkin butt was just starting solid foods and hadn't even learned to crawl yet. Things sure do change fast!

Who you calling a pumpkin butt??

Aplin Farms and The National Peanut Festival

Whenever there are special events or festivals around here we try to make it out to them, because, well there isn't a whole lot to do on an average weekend. At the end of September we went to Oktoberfest, which was conveniently held 2 blocks from our house. We envisioned drinking fun German beers and eating bratwursts and stumbling walking home. Oddly enough, they only had ONE kind of German beer and we were more into the Deep Fried Oreos than anything. It was that night that I decided I would try just about anything fried while living in 'bama. I like to call it embracing my new home.

Then there was our adventure to Aplin Farms at the end of October. We had the most perfect Fall day for our trip there. Turns out Fall does exist (in a very mild form) here! There were tractor rides, a pumpkin patch, petting farm, country store, games, and my favorite, the sunflower fields. You could pick as many sunflowers as you wanted for free. We only grabbed one, and spent time taking in the scenery. Makaela loved the wind blowing in her hair.

This past week we explored the National Peanut Festival. It was pretty cool; there were tons of food booths - a combination of traditional fair/festival vendors and countless stations set up by local churches, boy scout troops, HS bands etc. that were selling yummy foods. In keeping with my promise to devour all things fried, I of course had to try a deep fried snickers. Tim had a deep fried twinkie. 

It was so wrong it was right. 

Little did we know we would later stumble upon deep fried koolaid (yeah...I don't know how it works either), and deep fried peanut butter cups. Call me a failure, but I was a bit deep-fried-out, so I didn't give those a try. Whomp Whomp. 

We walked around for awhile, and laughed about the hilarious art on some of the rides. This one below was on a haunted house. Why are Lenny Kravitz and 50 Cent on there? We're not sure either.

Tim even won Makaela her first festival toy. It is a just-her-size-penguin and she loves it. Thanks Daddy!

The night we were there Easton Corbin was performing which was pretty neat because you could see his show, and all you had to pay was the admission to the festival ($6). We didn't stick around for the show, but we heard it was great. 

On the way home from the ol' Peanut Festival...excuse me...NATIONAL Peanut Festival... 

....we tried out a little diner close to home called Our Place Diner. It was delicious, super clean and we loved the family feel. The owners came around to each table and chatted and were so friendly. Oh and they were SO understanding and helpful when Makaela spilled my water allllll over the table. Sigh. Anyway, we'll definitely be going back there!