Breaking New Ground: trip to the farm

At the end of last weekend I realized that we were running out of days to take Malakai to the pumpkin patch. The weather was finally acting like fall in Oregon, tons of rain and fairly cold days.

Ben + I both wanted to be there for his first real trip to the pumpkin patch. Last year, he wasn't even crawling yet. It looked a little something like this...

{I posted a photo of this orchard earlier this week}

We didn't buy a pumpkin that year. This year we went to a farm closer to our house and we didn't buy a pumpkin there either. I had envisioned having Malakai "select" one from the patch, but they were all rotten. All the nice ones were in the farms store front and I figured we could save money and pick one up at ANY storefront. So, we let Malakai loose in the patch for a bit and took advantage of the photo ops as fast as we could during the break in rain.

We dressed Malakai in grubby clothes so I wasn't worried about mud. We did however make sure he didn't stick his hand into the moldy pumpkins. He tripped over vines a lot, but didn't seem to care. He was literally running all over that field.

Ben's mom was able to come with us at a moments notice. She took some photos as well and helped us corral Malakai a few times. He really didn't want to stand still or be held for photos, he's pretty much a little blur in most of them.

{Kai loved drumming on the pumpkins}

{he didn't seem to like the water on his hands though}

Unfortunately we didn't get to take the hayride out to the pumpkin patch. We're guessing it was too late in the day or maybe they only run it on the weekends. We did get to see some hay though...

The rain washed away some of the paint, but you get the idea. They had a lot of things like this that made for some pretty fun pictures. I was actually thankful for the overcast sky which made for some great lighting, it was terribly cold though!

They had a playground area and near it were some places to take photos. There was an adorable little train.

But it didn't interest Malakai for very long. As soon as he wriggled free of Ben's grip...

{I just wanna be freeee!}

There were some goats + sheep that we couldn't get very good photos of, but Malakai enjoyed looking at them. We were set to go because it was so cold when we saw a few more photo ops we couldn't resist.

Ben set Malakai among a bunch of large pumpkins and I thought it would help him stay still for a photo. Instead he made this pathetic face and whined until we set him free again. Can't fence him in!

We had a great time watching Malakai run around and enjoy the new sights. Tomorrow we will attempt pumpkin carving with our 15 month old! That may make for a scary Halloween!

Happy Weekend +