The Farm's of October

We've discovered over the last couple of years that October is a pretty fun month to live close to Snohomish and the Valley. There are multiple Pumpkin/Corn Farms around and they go all out for the fall season. We are not talking just a little pumpkin patch. It is a big pumpkin patch, a huge corn maze, hay rides, train rides, playgrounds, corn pits, bikes, the whole deal. Since we had a sunny fall weekend we decided to go to Bob's Corn Farm. We hadn't been to this particular farm before and the kids had a great time.

Just to set the mood

As we walked in from the parking lot, we were able to see some of the LARGE pumpkins.
First stop was the cow train. We arrived at the farm right around opening time and were able to get our own private ride. The train is pulled by a tractor at a pretty high speed...the kids loved this. It went around and through a barn, up and down hills, over bumps....good times.
After our cow train ride we hopped on to the hay trailer hooked to this....
The tractor took us over to the corn maze. We took some pictures of the boys and the girls.

I mentioned the mazes around here are serious business. I believe they told us this one was 2 1/2 miles. Here is the corn field from far away.

And here we are getting ready to start. Tyler and Hailey ran most of it. Tyler thinks that corn mazes are the best ever. He loves it when there is a turn and you have to choose which way to go.
And they're off

A little side note story on Hailey. She's been going through a yelling/hitting phase for a while now. Everything is fine and then she gets upset about something (typically having to do with Tyler or myself) and the screaming or hitting starts. When this happens we ask her to go sit on the stairs until she's ready to be sweet (a sort of timeout). She is free to come out when she decides she is ready to be sweet. So these "timeouts" last anywhere from 10 seconds to 5 minutes. When she's ready she says "I'm ready to be sweet" and then we ask her to say sorry to whomever she hit/screamed at. Usually she's ready to be sweet pretty quickly but sometimes she sits on the stairs a really long time. Occasionally after she's been there a while I'll walk over and ask her if she's ready to be sweet and play and she's typically says "NO" in her angry voice. So she stays there :). She's pretty good a regulating herself. If only I could figure out how to get her to stop the hitting/screaming in the first place. I'm totally off track on my side note (ha, ha). My point really was that Hailey has said "sorry" a lot of times in her short life and she has started holding the rest of us accountable. When she sees someone/thing hurt she tells us to say sorry. It's starting to get a little out of hand. While we were walking through the maze (I was carrying her at this point), I stepped on a smashed fallen cornstalk. Hailey immediately said, say sorry to corn maze mommy. " Sorry, corn maze". Thanks, she said.

After the corn maze we spent some time at the john deer biking track.

We spent a few minutes at the playground (no pics.....I was drinking hot cider and trying to protect myself from the swarming bees that also really wanted some cider) and then a few minutes on the tire swing. I'm sure we will be visiting Bob's Corn again before the month is over. And we will like visit The Farm too as we had great fun there last year.

Oh, and we did come home with some fresh sweet corn that was very delicious.