Louisiana Style Pumpkin Patch

So I decided to be brave and venture out a bit with the kids this weekend...somewhere besides the library or walmart. Besides taking on a little more than I should of, it turned out OK. This family shot (minus Dave) was taken at the housings pumpkin patch activity. We got there early this year to avoid last years hour plus wait in lines, and the kids rode the hayride to pick out their plastic pumpkin with candy from the field. It was good fun, all except Spencer's uncontrollable crying over the kid in the scream costume behind us in line.

Saturday morning we ventured to a local pumpkin patch Maren had visited with her kindergarten class. She gave me a running tally of everything we did wrong..ie..not exactly as her class did, including the drive there, because apparently we drove the wrong way. Until we magically appeared at the farm, of course. The kids all got to pick out a pumpkin... Amanda showing me just how heavy that pumpkin really is...
Maren posing with her pick.
Spencer looking foe the right one...

Still looking...

The final pick...one he can carry. (It stayed with him all day long.)

Beautiful girl

And a trip to a Louisiana pumpkin patch wouldn't be complete without a craw fish trap demonstration. It was actually cool to see how this works as we see them in the ponds along the roads all the time. (And I would have gotten more pictures, but this was around when my camera battery died...thus all the fuzzy pics above taken from

Maren's kid camera.) To explain though..there are these funnels made from the wire at the bottom corners of the trap. The craw fish climb in looking for the bait and can't climb out. Craw fish are farmed from around Feb-May around here. They are the ugliest little things ( a cross between a lobster and a large shrimp I would say), but apparently taste really good. The kids expressions were priceless when he held up a live craw fish for them to see. Those pincher's are huge! I plan to try them this next year. Wasn't willing with the pregnancy last year, with them being bottom dwellers and all.

Saturday evening we took a quick trip to the girls school for their fall festival. I figured if they did something of that scale here, I had better support it, as activities of that sort are rare at the school. Amanda won a cake at the cake walk, and Maren was sooo excited to see her teacher there, she talked about it all the way home.

We topped off the weekend with the girls primary program at church. This is the one Sunday a year where they present to the congregation the things that they are learning in their classes. They all did fantastic. I loved being with my sunbeam class that I teach every week, and my little ones even behaved for those that helped that with them during that time. It never fails to amaze me when the little ones teach with such a simple message, how strong the Spirit is.