No soccer, so we crammed it all in this weekend...

WARNING... This post turned into a novel. Get a snack, and a drink and take your time.....


This weekend was busy. We didn't have soccer, but we had a birthday party, a town festival and a trip to the pumpkin patch. I need to go back to work to relax!

First, on Saturday morning, we attended a birthday party for twins on our soccer team. They have 5 acres of land that is absolutely the prefect setting. Trevor and I both were green with envy. The house and land are actually for sale, but that is not an option for us, so we just enjoyed being there and dreaming a little.

Hollister riding a horse, posing for me with Snoopy, grabbing for candy after the pinata, and swinging with Hamilton. Now I wish I had taken more pictures of the land....

After the party we headed to the local Hogeye Festival. This is our third year. Read about the first and second festivals we attended. This year ended up being shortened due to the rain. But we did get our fill of some fried food! This year we also went with Kristy, Tony and Jack, our neighbors. They were first timers!


This is why our festival time was short. It was nice when we got there, overcast, windy, but nice. Then the rain came... it only lasted about 10 minutes, but it was strong. Then, the sun came back out and holy moly, it was HOT! While it rained, we ate our fried potato chips. No turkey leg this year. For those of you that don't know that story, click here.


Before the rain, Hollister and Jack rode these motorized dogs. They loved them! How cute are they?

And of course, the famous Hogeye pig. One of these days I'll get us all in a pic with that pig. If I do, it'll be our Christmas photo for sure!

Today, we visited the local pumpkin patch. I had originally wanted to go to a larger one about 2 hours from here, but so glad we didn't do that. We have two pumpkin patches in Elgin. One is 5 miles from our house, the other is maybe 10. Why not stay local?
They had pumpkins (duh!), scarecrow building, face painting, train ride, fire truck rides, a pumpkin hunt, a pumpkin slide game, fishing, play areas, concessions, etc... It was HOT! There was a good crowd and we had a lot of fun. The best part was, when we got tired, we left and were home in just a few minutes. That doesn't happen much when you live in a small town. As I was downloading pictures, I realized we took a ton. Trevor has gotten a new camera recently and he took a bunch too. I have something like 85 pictures... So, are you ready? Just start scrolling....

Just kidding.. here's a few from the fun we had!

How cute are these pumpkins! (Oh and those orange things are cool too!)



The bean bag toss

The pumpkin hunt: the farm is actually a Christmas tree farm... they hide pumpkins out where the trees are and let the kids find them. The ride on the big tractor and trailer out there is just as much fun as finding the pumpkins.

He found some!


Next was the pumpkin slide. Hollister was really into this. He had to work the pump to get the pumpkin down the slide and into the bucket. He could actually do it on his own. I was very proud of him, it was hard work.







And.. it's in!

Another fun thing they did was a pumpkin launch. The name says it all. You put a baby pumpkin in a launcher and try to get it in a box.

Check out the top left corner of this picture.
That is their pumpkin flying through the air!


Here are the boxes they were trying to hit. The last one hit the brown box (you can barely see it in this pic, but its there), but didn't go in. It was fun though.



Here's just more of my cuties!

There was also a petting farm and fishing, but its late and if you have made it this far, you are as exhausted as I am. I should have done several posts for this weekend.... Thanks for hanging in and reading this far though, or just checking out the pictures, that's the fun part anyway!

The more I think about it, the happier I am that we stayed local for the pumpkin patch!