"Amaized" and Confused.

We took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to hit the pumpkin patch this weekend. We haven't been to a pumpkin patch since Brogan was very small, and it seemed like the perfect thing to do on such a warm, sunny day. I think Braden was looking forward to going, but the littles were beside themselves with excitement. As in dancing and jigging in place excited.

Brogan decided the event was worthy enough to open his piggy bank bring some of his hard-earned money to buy the perfect pumpkin. A hayrack ride took us over to the pumpkin patch, and Brogan examined many, many pumpkins in order to find the perfect one.



Here he is with the "Great Pumpkin."


My boys are suckers for those plywood photo backgrounds. They're at nearly every carnival or children's event, and my boys cannot resist their siren call.


The area was packed with cutouts, hay bale mazes, slides, and areas where children could roll or jump in hay and corn.

Our favorite activity was the "Corn Maize." We bought our tickets and set off into the maze, the boys racing ahead of M. and I on the paths in the tall corn.

At first, M. and I would pretend to get lost, and it was like something out of a bad summer stock theatre production: "Gee. I. think. we. are. lost! (insert wide-eyed facial expression here. Gesture stiffly and self-consciously.) Where can we be? What do we do?"

The boys would stop at every intersection and carefully decide which direction to take.


45 mintues later we were singing a different tune. We had wandered in circles, running across the same people making the same Hansel and Gretel jokes, and we really wanted out. Finally, hot, thirsty, and tired we stumbled upon the exit. The attendant turned to us and said cheerily, "Congratulations! You've made it to the halfway point!"



Halfway? Halfway!?

Ugh.

We took a moment to get a drink from the machine before venturing back in to the maize. The drinks helped quite a bit, and we were in much better spirits when we started off.



This time I decided to mark our path in the dirt. I did this surreptitiously, and I impressed M. with my navigational abilities: "Honey, I think we've already been down this path. Why don't we try going this way?" I'm sure he wondered where my directional abilities had been during the "wandering in the wilderness" first half of the maze.

Anyway, I was looking really good until a family approaching behind us exclaimed, "Hey! She's writing in the dirt! What a great idea!"

My cool now blown, the other family followed us as we made our way through the corn. To kind of break up the caravan, we stopped to take pictures and let the other family go ahead.

(Which way do we go?)


After we exited the corn, I ran into the other family again and we chatted about the maze. I mentioned that it took us nearly an hour to do the first half, but only 30 minutes to do the second half. We'd definitely seen improvement on that second half!

The father in the other family said, "Yeah. It was definitely much more fun when you didn't use the map!"


Shocked, I asked, "There was a map?"

"Oh, yeah!" he replied. "It's printed right on your ticket!"

I have a feeling we'll beat our time next year.