Pumpkinland

There is a place called Vineyard garden center in Orem that has a really cute fall activity for toddlers and preschoolers called Pumpkinland.  My big kids thought it was kind of boring when I took them last year (I took them when they were little and they loved it) so this year I thought I’d plan it for the playgroup we go to each week.  It turned out to be a great idea because we got the same pricing as preschools so it was a lot less expensive than it would have been if we’d just gone on our own.  Liam had a great time and so did all the other kids.  I was ready for a nap when it was all over though.  I always feel that way after taking my kids to do fun stuff…it’s tiring! 

When you first go in you are actually in their garden center shop and they have it decorated for Halloween including a couple cute photo backdrops.  We did the best we could to get all the kids to sit still, but if you have 2 and 3 year olds you know it’s impossible.  There were a couple kids that we realized were missing after we took the picture, but the kids didn’t want to sit anymore.  Liam thought it was really funny to hit that scarecrows leg and make the whole thing bounce—you can tell all the kids were intrigued by it too.  This was the only time that I got Liam’s picture in one of these things with other people too…and he’s not even looking. Off into the corn maze.  These two hooligans kept running ahead and I’m really surprised that they didn’t get lost.  This cracks me up. I wanted a picture with Liam and this is all we got.  I still love them because they totally show his crazy personality. This is the point where we hit a dead end and these two were leading us all (the kids took turns leading and choosing which way to go).  We got there and they both said, “what happened??”  It was really funny.  We did finally find our way out of the maze (its actually a fairly easy one compared to most of the ones around here) I think he was glad to be out.  After the maze came the animals and the playground.  Liam ran around from one thing to the next hardly stopping at all.  I really wanted him to peek his head through the jack o lantern for a picture, but he refused. He liked the house of mirrors and climbing on this thing.  Then we walked over to the picnic area for lunch and he spent a ton of time playing on the playground that’s there.  We had a blast.  I hope everyone else from our playgroup did too.  It’s kinda hard for the Moms to visit at a place like this compared to the places we usually go, but its so fun to see the kids playing together and enjoying themselves.  This is the train we had to wait for on our way home.  This was the third train we’d seen since we got to Pumpkinland.  One drove right by us super close while we were walking from the corn maze to the animals.  Liam waved to the engineer of that train and he tooted his horn for us, but it was so loud since we were so close (like 20 feet away with just a chain link fence between us and the train close) that it kinda scared Liam I think.  Liam is still talking about the “gate” that closed so the train wouldn’t run us over in our car. This is him showing me how the train goes, “choo, choo!”  This may have been the highlight of his day he loves trains so much.