Yahoo Farms Jasper, GA

This weekend we had grand plans of heading an hour and a half north of our house to go to Mercier Orchards. The idea was to spend a magical day picking apples, and then on the way home hit up another place for a pumpkin patch. Thirty minutes into the drive we were stuck in traffic, the kids were getting restless, and all of a sudden I had zero desire to be in the car for another hour. Miraculously on the side of the road we saw a sign that said "pumpkins yahoo farms, two miles on the left". It was a pretty risky move since we knew nothing about it, but it an attempt to free myself from the car I told Derek to go for it. 

We had the best time. They had a petting zoo, hayrides, a pony ride, bounce houses, a corn maze, a little "hay maze" for the little ones, and so many other fun things to do and see. When we got there we spent time in the front playing with the animal boards. Em got the biggest kick out of peeping her head through the holes. Jay on the other hand was getting a little frustrated that he couldn't actually get his entire head inside the hole. 

Once we were done playing with the animal boards and exploring through the rows of big pumpkins that they had in the front we decided to walk through the area and do an evaluation of which activities we actually wanted to do, and which ones we were okay with skipping.  During our initial walk through we made sure to stop and see all the animals in the petting zoo area. Jay's favorite part was watching the chickens eat popcorn, and ironically, it was Em's least favorite part. 

While we were walking through and figuring out what we wanted to do, Jay saw the pony and decided that he had to go for a ride. So we went to the inside pavilion to buy our tickets for they hayride, the hay maze, and the pony for Jay.  We made our way back to the pony and when Jay realized that we were actually going to pick him up and put him on the pony he lost it. He officially wanted nothing to do with it. Since I just spent two dollars on a pony I decided someone was going to ride it. We took Em out of her stroller and put her on top and she had the best time ever. She kept reaching forward in her saddle to stroke it's hair and was so stinking cute. She cried when it was over but it's nice to know if we ever consider hippotherapy in the future, she'll be on board with it. 

After Em's pony ride I took Jay through the little hay maze. He wasn't the least bit interested because he had just seen the tractor pull in with all the people from the hayride and the entire time we were walking through he kept saying, "I want to ride the tractor". We went through in the fastest route possible, but missed the hayride by five seconds. We killed some time waiting for the next tractor to come by watching people shoot corn on the cob from a massive cannon which Jay thought was the greatest thing ever.  I was the Debbie Downer commenting on how it was a waste of food, and that people in Africa would want that corn, and then I was the least liked person by the corn cannon. Once it was our turn for the hayride as we were getting on the tactor the hillbilly driver said, "That's a fine woman you got there!", to Derek in his best southern accent... he became my favorite person ever. 

After the hayride we made our way through the store. We decided to get one big pumpkin for us to all carve for family home evening next week and Jay found a little baby pumpkin that had to come home with us. Luckily for him it was only two dollars, and we find him to be super cute, so we obliged the request. Also, I love the picture of Derek and Jay walking in sync with each other. Jay loves doing things just like daddy. 

We decided to start a new tradition whenever we go anywhere to do something fun where we make sure that we give our camera to someone to make sure we get a picture of the four of us together. We realized that we have a pathetic amount of pictures that actually have all four of us in them and so we decided that whether it meant asking someone to take a picture for us, or bringing the tripod with us on our outings, we need to get better at actually taking pictures. So here is the first of hopefully many more pictures of the four of us doing fun things.