Fake Farm Fun

We visited the orchard one day a couple weeks ago after school.  I'm leading school tours there again this fall, giving our family free admission; somehow Derek managed to avoid going all last year, so we were quick to drag him along this time.



I probably shouldn't say "dragged," as he was happy to participate in every activity there, which was plain fun for the kids and mixed fun for me as I was reminded that some people are irritatingly good at most everything.

Of course you can successfully rope pretend cattle, Derek.  Of course you can.

And pull a tractor up a slight incline with two of your children.

Although I'm shamefully excited to report that were unable to budge that thing until I joined in and pulled, too.  Raw animal strength, that's me.

He finally found a chair big enough for him, and then stepped onto the jumping pillow and thrilled/ terrified his family by bouncing right next to us and sending us all sky high.  The kids actually handled this better than I did, as every time he'd start to jump my way I'd mutter, "NoNoNoNoNo" and slowly crumple into myself.  It turns out I'm a bit of a baby about being shot five feet into the air.

We entered the corn maze, which seemed like a good idea until my family deserted me- Derek in the vast, 5-acre maze, the kids into the much more manageable kid's section.  I followed the kids in, took three turns, and got lost. 

This was a bad idea.

Plus my phone was about to die, so I resigned myself to a life of ferality within the corn.  But lo!

After my trusty guide gently led me out of the agricultural labyrinth (aka activity made for six-year-olds), I was too scarred to continue.  Or we were all hungry?  I don't remember.  This is why I need to stop trying to write these posts in six different sittings. 

[Enter abrupt ending here.]

After School

Half the days I've worked at the orchard lately, I've checked out, run home to get the kids off the bus, saying to myself, "I am in no way, shape, or form ready to go right back there.  I will only take the kids if they specifically ask to go.  Surely they're too tired from a long, strenuous day of book-learnin', though."

Then Atticus disembarks from the giant metal twinkie, marches up to me, and sweetly asks, "Can we go to the orchard?"

Jiveoiab'aiwhbaiewbh.


But I am a big girl with big girl panties of my very own, so I figuratively change into those and literally change out of my orchard shirt so I am not accosted within moments of re-entering.  Besides, I tell myself, I do so enjoy mentally adding up the "saved" cost of all these complementary visits we make, kind of like all the money you "save" at Kohl's.  (Side note:  Does anyone else want to demand "Exactly how stupid do I look to you?" when the Kohl's cashier tells you "You saved X dollars today!"  Not to worry, I do not, as despite what I may lead you to believe on this blog I do have some interpersonal skills, not to mention a healthy respect for all the garbage our friends in retail have to stomach on a daily basis.)

So we jump backwards into the corn pool.

We swoon over our son's profile.  (Maybe just me doing that.)

We hold baby goats, despite the fact that they won't stop trying to eat our clothing and hair.

We go down the combine slide.

And we do our homework in the van on the way there and back- one my stipulations for being allowed to go immediately after school.

I promise, we do still have a third child, and he is allowed to come to the orchard with us; he does not have a cupboard under the stairs.  Here is a photo of him and Derek reading on a tiny red couch at the library, instead.

Apples and Jumping and Jumping and Apples

The seasonal work I've recently undertaken is that of school tour guide at our local apple orchard/pumpkin patch/place you go to wear your kids out.  This is fairly ideal as they took my "I can only work two days a week for these very limited hours" availability and basically said, "Okey dokey."  So now I'm talking to kids about apples and pollination and pheromone traps and accepting that they really just want me to hurry up and stop talking so they can go jump in the corn pool.

I've also learned I roll my eyes a lot (note to self:  apologize to Adelaide for giving her so much grief about this habit, as she is apparently just mimicking her mother); I had to quash this urge when a four-year-old daintily informed me that she doesn't go to a preschool, it's a learning center (I also had to resist the desire to ask her, "You still can't read, right?  Then you're in preschool."), also when another little girl squealed and cried every time a bug flew, crawled, or otherwise invaded a ten-foot bubble around her.  Patient reminders that we are on a working farm did nothing to penetrate her haze of panic.

For every whimpering princess and unimpressed boy who declares he likes the farm game on his mom's phone better than the actual farm (making me want to weep for the youth of America), there were ten others excited to learn how to properly pick an apple, and taste the difference between tart and sour varieties, and look at deer fences.

Arguably the best part of the whole deal?  Our little family gets in free to the place.  So now I leave the orchard, pick the kids up from the bus stop, and drive back so they can play at least once a week.

Caedmon's running form is around a million times better than mine.  Face included.

Atticus did hardly any jumping in the corn; he mostly seemed to enjoy lying around watching other kids getting told off by their moms for throwing corn.

There are two jumping pillows to satisfy all your bouncing needs- a small one for our smaller people, and a big one for our bigger people.  To jump on the big one, you need to be bigger, yea high according the sign in front of the pillows.  This makes sense to mothers who like for their children to be safe while jumping.  It feels woefully unfair to five-year-old boys who are not tall enough to jump on the big pillow with their big siblings.

He did eventually get past his finely tuned sense of justice (or injustice, as the case was here in his mind) and had a ball with the smaller pillow all to himself, as seen in the first photo above.

My biggest challenge now is to not spend the entirety of my wages on apple cider doughnuts.  I get them at a discount!  And they're made with real apple cider!  And isn't it somehow a sin to not enjoy the more pleasurable parts of our existence- or... something...?