Morning at the pumpkin patch

When Elliot, Carl and I went to Taiwan last year, Erik got to stay home and spend the week with his grandma. During this time they went to several pumpkin patches and Erik couldn't stop talking about them. He loved "pumpkin man" and pumpkin patches and both of those came up frequently in his creative play. I couldn't wait for the following Halloween when I wouldn't be so busy and could do all the fun stuff with him.

Erik and I go to a mommy & me class on Friday mornings. This is my opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with him since Elliot gets me when Erik is in preschool. Today was a field trip day to Lombardi Pumpkin patch. I agonized for a long time whether to bring Elliot and cancel my sitter or just take Erik. In the end I remembered how much Erik LOVES pumpkin patches and how hard it would be to manage both of them walking and decided to not bring Elliot. I felt a bit guilty, but realized it was the right decision because Erik was hard to manage with just him I have no idea how I would have done it with two kids.

From the moment we arrived Erik was thrilled and totally excited in a hyper way. I could barely drag him away from these giant pumpkins to meet up with his class and go on the rides.

Once I got him to go inside he was so excited he wanted to see everything at once. He would not stay with me while I paid the teacher and just started running everywhere and picking up all sorts of pumpkins.

What is even more exciting is that there was a train ride involved through a sunflower field. He was totally captivated by the sunflowers, scarecrows and train that he kept running all over and pointing out all sorts of things. I could hardly keep him in one spot long enough to take a picture.

Once everyone from the class arrived we were able to board the train and look at all the cars and scarecrows. I think Erik asked me what each and every scarecrow was as we passed. (forgot to take a picture) I had to come up with a lot of creative answers. 

After more wrangling and running around looking at everything, we got to go to the petting zoo. He is definitely getting over a lot of our his fears. Erik had no problems in the petting zoo and touched every animal that would let him with one nice pet. I think he tried to pet every single animal in there and a lot of them were running away. I tried to teach him that if they run away they don't want you to touch them, he kind of got that point.

The last and most exciting activity was picking out a pumpkin. Erik got to pick out two, one for him and one for mommy. He showed no discrimination and picked the first two that caught his eye.

We ended our morning eating his favorite food, popcorn and just relaxing. We then went to the car to drop off the pumpkins, but Erik wanted to get in the car so I just went with it and left for home. All in all a good day at the pumpkin patch and one of several more trips to come.

Just a note about how I photographed today's excursion. I actually used my 24-70, 2.8 lens. I haven't used it in months because I always seemed to have focusing problems. I then realized when I manually metered I was more aware of my shutter speed and I manually control my focus. It seemed to have made a big different today. My images are just as tack on as when I use my 50 mm or 85 mm prime lenses. I was really happy with the results. Also I didn't feel like the camera was too heavy or too much of a burden for this small trip. Usually I hate this lens because it weighs close to 3 lbs.